New DIT campus will house just 10 per cent of students

Only 10 per cent of students can live on campus at the new €200 million Dublin Institute of Technology in Grangegorman, Dublin, under “fast- track” planning rules for the development.

Accommodation for 2,000 students will be built on the 50-acre site at the former St Brendan’s Hospital in Dublin 7.

The campus is due to have a student population of more than 20,000 by 2020.

The decision to build housing for just 2,000 students was made eight years ago, before building standards banning bedsits came in and before students were priced out of the private rental market.

But despite the current housing crisis, the Grangegorman Development Agency said it cannot increase bed-spaces because they were fixed under the fast-track planning scheme for the campus.

The campus is designated a strategic development zone (SDZ) which means any development on the site cannot, once approved by Dublin City Council, be appealed to An Bord Pleanála.

Developments consistent with the planning scheme for the zone must be granted by the council.

‘Physical constraints’

Plans for the SDZ were drawn up in 2010 and ratified by the council in mid-2012. Final approval for the zone was granted by An Bord Pleanála in May 2012.

However, the decision to allocate housing for just 2,000 students comes from the original masterplan for the campus devised in 2007.

The figure results from a study of “proportionate provision” in other third-level institutions and the particular profile of DIT students, Grangegorman Development Agency said.

“The quantum of 2,000 beds reflected the perceived demand when the masterplan was devised and now forms an integral part of the overall site SDZ planning scheme,” said the agency.

It was also based on the “physical constraints” of the site, it said.

“The maximum area allocated to student accommodation has been set in the SDZ planning scheme and cannot be exceeded. Future additional accommodation would have to be off-campus.”

Under construction

DIT is moving from 39 separate sites throughout Dublin city to one amalgamated campus at Grangegorman.

With 20,000 students, the institute accounts for close to 10 per cent of all students in higher education in Ireland.

The first 1,000 students moved to the campus, which is still under construction, last September and about 10,000 are due to be attending by 2017, with the remainder expected to be there by 2020.

The campus accommodation is being built in three phases, with the first phase of about 700 bed-spaces due for completion in September 2018.

Phases two and three will be constructed to “suit the future campus student complement”, the agency said.

The Higher Education Authority recently recommended the Government take urgent action to tackle a 25,000 bed shortfall in student accommodation nationally.