The Minister for Education has announced the first stage of the new Institute of Technology in Blanchardstown, Dublin, which will be the first third-level college set up specifically to target disadvantaged students.
Mr Martin announced Government approval for an establishment board to oversee the college's creation. Its first students at foundation, certificate and diploma level are expected to start next September. Most of these will be doing foundation courses at local VEC schools and colleges offering Post-Leaving Certificate courses.
The college will be fully operational by September 1999. It will be built in phases over four to five years as a "stand-alone" institution and is expected to cost £3040 million.
The steering committee report on its creation is understood to have rejected bids from the National College of Industrial Relations to set it up and from Tallaght Institute of Technology to run it as part of a three-campus college including Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
Mr Martin said yesterday that a high proportion of the new institute's students would "not just be people who are progressing straight on from the Leaving Certificate but will include mature students, people with disabilities and the unemployed." Ireland is currently far behind other EU countries in the number of such people who go on to third-level education.
The Minister emphasised the need for strong local connections, so that the institute does not become just another college for students to commute to from all over the greater Dublin area.
To this end it will have formal links with local schools and VEC colleges, which will provide prethird-level "feeder" courses for non-standard, non-Leaving Certificate college entrants. These courses will aim to develop students' study skills and self-confidence. West Dublin currently has the State's lowest participation levels in third-level education.
The institute's courses will be particularly aimed at areas of job opportunity - information technology, electronics, languages, science and business.
It will emphasise strong links with local industry. Tallaght Institute of Technology already has a big input from such companies as Intel and IBM in the form of equipment, mentoring and guest lecturers. The plan is for Blanchardstown to have a similar relationship with high-tech firms in Dublin's "Silicon Valley" to the west of the city.
For example, the institute will offer the new National Certificate in Technology, designed jointly by the RTCs and industry. Some 300 students, mainly women and long-term unemployed people, started this course at various colleges this month.
Both Tallaght IT and Dublin City University have offered help to get the new institute started - the former with staff and course design; the latter with procedures to allow Blanchardstown certificate and diploma students to move on to DCU degree courses.