Councillor Charlie O’Connor has welcomed progress on plans for the development of an Innovation Centre on Tallaght Town Centre lands and pursued the matter once again at the January meeting of the Tallaght Area Committee of which he is Chairman.
He told the meeting that this development is very important for the Tallaght region and the community is anxious to see plans come to fruition. The Council’s CEO provided Charlie O’Connor with the following detailed response “South Dublin County Council (SDCC) procured a study for the development of new enterprise/innovation space with associated enterprise support services in the County in 2017. This Report was presented to the members of the County Council and its recommendations were endorsed following a number of briefings. Primary recommendation is that a 3,000 sq. metre enterprise/innovation space be provided in the County and the preferred location for an innovation/enterprise space based on criteria within the report is the Tallaght Corridor, i.e., between the ITT (now TU Dublin, Tallaght Campus) and Tallaght University Hospital.
SDCC sought tenders on OJEU for:- 1. Project Advisor and Centre Management Team and following evaluation process selection of Oxford Innovation was completed in August and appointed September 2019 and 2.Architect-led Design Team and McCulloughMulvin Architects appointed October 2019
Meetings with SDCC and the Design Team commenced in November 2019 and this project is progressing delivery through Planning and subject to same will continue to construction stage during 2020. South Dublin has ambitious plans to become one of the leading locations in Ireland for Innovative and Technology rich firms and the delivery of this ‘flagship facility’, a very visible hub of innovative business growth, will act as an aspirational ‘landmark’ to students, residents, local and the wider community and become a focal point for driving forward innovation and enterprise activity in and around the County.” According to Charlie O’Connor, who is a former Chairman of Get Tallaght Working, this is a good news story for Tallaght and he has undertaken to continue to press for the early delivery of the Centre.
