Trinity has been left €150 million short by the government for the development of Trinity East, which was envisioned to be a brand-new campus in the Docklands but will be significantly pared back.
The facility was planned to be the crown jewel of the new Trinity East campus in the so-called Silicon Docks, which The University Times revealed last November was set to be radically re-imagined due to funding shortfalls.
Trinity Media Relations Officer Thomas Deane told this newspaper in an email that despite this setback, “the pre-development phase of the Trinity East project has been very successful and Trinity now has a fully assembled site for development of a future campus”.
“The pre-development phase is coming to a natural end and a period of strategic review will follow in which we will assess our institutional needs, strategic priorities, and vision for the site”, Deane added.
In response to a question about potential alternative sources of funding, Deane said that “any funding should be appropriate to intentions for the site and in line with the outcome of the strategic review”.
The €150 million figure was based on a preliminary business case made before the government’s National Development Plan was published without “any allocations for Innovation Districts in Ireland or for Trinity East”, where the facility was set to be built.
The total cost of developing the full Trinity East site has not been finalised.
According to University Council minutes from last December, Provost Linda Doyle said that because the funding had not been received, Trinity’s focus will shift to “completing the Trinity Technology and Enterprise Centre (TTEC) redevelopment phase and will undertake a strategic review of the E3 plans”.
Trinity East was known as TTEC until December 2020, when it was renamed Trinity East.
In an interview with this newspaper last November, Orla Sheils, the College’s Vice Provost, said that “the large injection of government funding that had been anticipated” for Trinity East “does not look to be forthcoming. And so the project needs to be, for the short term, scaled back”.
“It’s not going to be the expansive large-scale capital project that was hoped for”, Sheils said. “That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It just won’t happen now.”
When the Trinity East project was first conceived in 2015, Trinity said the E3 Research Institute would address the “skills shortage in [the] Irish economy” by creating 1,800 new STEM student places.
Construction was originally set to be completed this year.
Then-Provost Patrick Prendergast said that the aim of the institute was “to enable new research around areas of global challenge; create new curricula in STEM; and attract many more students to our university”.
Speaking at the launch of the campus in 2019, Prendergast said: “A new innovation district with a new university campus at its heart is a vital step in enabling Dublin to be ranked in the top 20 global cities for innovation.”
Trinity has spent a number of years planning to develop the Trinity East site in the Grand Canal Dock, which is bound by Pearse St, Macken St, the DART line and Grand Canal Quay. The new campus was billed as a globally competitive centre for innovation and entrepreneurship.
It was to be modelled on districts in cities like Boston, Toronto, Rotterdam and Barcelona, and it was hoped that the project would draw in more foreign direct investment to Ireland. The location of the campus was chosen because of its proximity to the offices of many of the world’s largest technology companies, such as Google and Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
The scaling back of the project, Sheils said, “gives us time to refocus to look at and to be absolutely certain that the activities that we plan for that site will be exactly what we want to do to be associated with”.
The site was originally due to have a combination of new institutes and innovation centres as well as a research institute as part of the E3 project. College also hopes to locate student accommodation on the site, aimed at postgraduate students.
In her bid for Provost last year, Prof Linda Doyle repeatedly cited Trinity East as a potential solution to issues such as student accommodation shortages. In an interview with The University Times, she said: “I absolutely think that we need to properly develop Trinity East as a full, 100 per cent second city-centre campus. I think we are lacking in too many things to not be thinking of it as such.”
“One of the models at the moment is that you could give some away [land] to a developer, and you could use some of the money to build things, whereas I actually think we just need to occupy 100 per cent of it”, Doyle said.
On the E3 Research Institute, she said that “there’s loads of really, really great ideas, and within that context of the thinking of that campus in that newer way, there should be a way to bring E3 research to fruition, but in that kind of newer landscape that I’m talking about”.
Last year, Trinity received a donation of €30 million to go towards the E3 Research Institute in Trinity East – the largest philanthropic gift in the history of the state. The donation was made by Eric Kinsella, a Trinity graduate and founder of Jones Engineering, and his wife Barbara.
An email to staff and students said the “transformational” donation “will support the E3 Research Institute and help launch the development of a new Trinity East campus in the Docklands”.
“The E3 Research Institute will be among the first centres internationally to integrate engineering, technology and scientific expertise at scale in addressing some of the biggest challenges facing Ireland and the world – challenges such as climate change, renewable energy, personalised data, water, connectivity, and sustainable manufacturing.”
“The Institute will considerably broaden Trinity’s capacity in emerging areas of research and innovation, and lead to strong economic and societal benefits for the country. It will be the lynchpin of our new campus at Trinity East, located in the heart of the Grand Canal Innovation District.”
