The Government's decision to nominate the Treasury Holdings project for the new National Convention Centre (NCC) will be greeted with enthusiasm and no small measure of relief by the tourist industry and by all of those concerned about urban regeneration in our capital city. The absence of dedicated large-scale conference facilities in Dublin has been an embarrassment to a city which has worked hard to cultivate a very positive international tourist image. It has been a long wait; almost a decade has passed since plans for a NCC were first mooted. In the interim, the project has been bedevilled by political dithering and legal threats as various bidders complained about the tendering process and the method of selection. On one occasion Mr Edna Kenny, a former tourism minister, announced that the Royal Dublin Society was his preferred site for the NCC but intervention from the European Commission and complaints from other bidders led to a new tendering process. Treasury Holdings was selected after two earlier attempt to tender for the project collapsed amid legal and political recrimination. The decision to award the project to Treasury Holdings is unlikely to prove controversial. The futuristic project was widely hailed as the most imaginative and stylish of those tendered. The £70 million development, which will be built on CIE land on Dublin's quays between the Point and Dublin Port, will also help in the process of revitalising a much neglected part of Dublin. With luck, it will help in the process of pulling the centre of gravity of the city - now heavily concentrated in the Dublin 2 and Dublin 4 belt - towards the northside. The Treasury Holdings project has the added advantage of being linked to a potential new central railway station at North Wall Quay which might also serve as a terminus for a future rail link to Dublin Airport.
The completion of the NCC project should also yield substantial economic benefits. Dublin - the only EU capital without a conference centre - will at last be able to compete for the 350 large-scale conference held throughout the EU every year. By some estimates, the NCC has the capacity to generate over 30,000 additional visitors every year, sustain over 1,500 jobs and provide some £30 million in additional tourist revenue. Work on the new centre is expected to begin in October next - provided there are no lengthy planning and/or legal difficulties. This will allow the Government to draw down about £25 million in EU funding before the current structural fund programme expires at the end of next year. The hope is that the new centre will be in place by January 1st, 2001. It is an exciting prospect. The new centre should provide a much-needed anchor to the ambitious plans for the Dockland development and could help to revitalise whole areas of the capital city.