UCC President Patrick O’Shea says the college’s major new business school in the heart of Cork city will bring ‘vibrant entrepreneurial benefits and jobs’ to the area.

UCC is to open a new school, which will accommodate close to 4,000 students and 200 staff, on a site close to South Mall and Patrick’s Street.

As UCC President I made a commitment that our new business school should be city-facing and that we would be of the community and for the community,” Professor O’Shea said. “That commitment was central to our choice of site for the new business school.”

UCC will base the new school on the Trinity Quarter site — a 1.46 acre site situated between Copley Street and South Terrace and fronting on to Union Quay. It is acquiring the former Brooks Haughton property from Dairygold Co-Operative Limited and expects to announce full details of the agreement in the coming weeks.

“As a business which calls Munster home and with deep connections going back decades with UCC, Dairygold is very pleased to see UCC establish a world-class business school in Cork City,” Dairygold Chief Executive, Jim Woulfe said. “Today’s announcement is a positive development for UCC, Dairygold, Cork city, business in general and the wider community.”

UCC plans to move courses in a range of business disciplines to the new location, with a planned moving in date of 2022 or 2023.

“We’ve seen the demand for our business programmes grow over the last few years,” Professor Thia Hennessy said. “This building will give us the capacity to realise our potential in terms of student numbers and to offer a world-class student and staff experience in a future-proofed learning environment for generations of business students to come.”

The business school announcement comes less than three months after UCC opened a centre for executive education in the former Cork Savings Bank building on Lapp’s Quay.