The Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown, the largest single new third-level project in the State, has been launched with a £20 million allocation from the Department of Education.
At a ceremony in Blanchardstown yesterday, the Minister for Education and Science, Mr Martin, said teaching at the new college would begin in a temporary building next September with electronics, computer engineering, information technology, business studies and languages certificate and diploma courses. Apprenticeship courses will also be offered.
The first permanent buildings of the new 60-acre campus at Blanchardstown Road North will be ready for occupation, with 900 full-time student places, by autumn 2001. Mr Martin said north-west Dublin had the lowest third-level participation rates in the State, "a situation we cannot allow to continue." He said the new institute would have to ensure that a high proportion of its students would come to it by routes outside the Leaving Certificate, including mature applicants, students with disabilities and students from poorer backgrounds.
He set the college the "very ambitious target" of having 30 per cent of its intake from mature and "second chance" students in the first five years of its existence. Only 1.1 per cent of entrants to Irish non-university third-level colleges are students over 26, compared to 48 per cent in the UK and an OECD average of 36.8 per cent.
Mr Martin said the second part of the new institute's remit was equally important: helping to meet the skills needs of modern industry.
He noted that the greater Blanchardstown area was being compared with Silicon Valley in the US because of the spectacular concentration and growth of high-technology firms there in the past five years.
"The Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown, can offer what industry wants - talented, hardworking people equipped with cutting-edge skills," he went on.
Noting the private sector's representation on the institute's establishment board, which is chaired by Mr Donal Connell, vice-president of 3Com Corporation, the Minister said he had no doubt that business and industry would forge strong links with the new college.
There are hopes, for example, that local companies like IBM - which have been pressing for the setting up of such a college for some years - will provide it with computers.
Mr Martin said the institute would be set up in conjunction with a new business park being developed jointly by Fingal County Council and the IDA.
Another innovation aimed at disadvantaged students will be the provision of pre-third-level "foundation" courses at local colleges and schools offering Post-Leaving Certificate programmes.
They will be aimed at ensuring that young people with non-academic backgrounds come to third-level courses with some preparation.