Job boom for Cork City as it is set to benefit from €500 million investment
Some 8,000 jobs could be created in Cork City as details emerge that €500 million has been earmarked for its redevelopment.
Why Weight?
After more than a decade of neglect, Ireland’s ‘second capital’ is set to see almost half a billion pumped into strategic development projects around the city centre and its surrounding areas.
At a briefing in the city’s Clarion Hotel, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney met with some of Cork’s leading business leaders to discuss the unprecedented investment, intended to be rolled out within the next 12 months.
Among those projects discussed, was the €60m regeneration of Pairc Ui Chaoimh, the GAA stadium in the Ballintemple area, and the ongoing One Albert Quay office project – one of the largest office complexes ever to be built in the city centre.
The multi-million office and retail development is valued at over €60 million.
Also a major focus was the estimated €1 billion earmarked for Cork Harbour, aimed at transforming the entire harbour region into one of the world’s greatest maritime and tourism centres over the coming years.
Already €80 million has been spent on two of eight harbour-related projects – €40 million to clean-up the old Irish Steel site on Haulbowline Island, and another €40m to redevelop Spike Island as a tourist attraction.
Mr Coveney said that, apart from the hundreds of construction jobs these projects had created, these development had the potential to create between 8,000 and 10,000 city centre-based jobs over the next few years.
“It is the combined effect of all of them — this will be transformational for Cork city.”
“When you add that all together in terms of increased numbers of people working in the city on construction sites, or the people working in these buildings, it will be transformational,” he added.
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, Cork Chamber CEO Conor Healy said that Cork City would be “transformed over the next three to five years.”
Welcoming the news though, he urged planners and the Government to “make the right decisions in terms of accommodation and public transport infrastructure to maximise the potential of these huge projects”.
“The nature of these types of office developments is that their workers will have a natural tendency towards living in an urban city environment,” he warned.
“But currently, Cork City does not have that level of housing or apartment provision to retain them in the city.”
