Point in Time: A historic moment for Tallaght with the opening of the RTC

“So a lot of our job was going out to the schools in the set-up year and telling them we would be on our way and that we’d be glad to meet them.

“We had an open day, but we had no college to show them.

“So the good people in The Square kindly gave us their premises for the night and we had visuals and we had six or seven hundred people in from the area.

“We didn’t have any pictures of the college that we could show to people, but we did have architectural drawings of what it was going to look like.

“We got a great response from the secondary schools in the area, particularly from the principals. They were promoting the college among their students.

“In the end, when we got the students in, we had a look at the home addresses and we reckoned that something like 90 percent of the students could have cycled to the college.

“It really did have a huge impact on the area and increased the availability of places in higher education,” he insisted.

Dr Columb Collins was appointed the very first principal of Tallaght RTC. Photo by Paddy Barrett

Almost 30 years on, and that same ethos of catering heavily to students from disadvantaged areas and backgrounds, remains firmly in place in what is now the Tallaght campus of TU Dublin- the first Technological University in Ireland that was the product of the amalgamation of IT Tallaght (renamed from the RTC in 1998), IT Blanchardstown and Dublin Institute of Technology at the outset of 2019.

Under current principal Thomas Stone, who himself was a lecturer in accountancy in the original team under Dr Collins back in 1992, TU Dublin Tallaght has continued to invest huge amounts of time, energy and finance into bettering the prospects of the youth of Tallaght and surrounding areas.

Fully appreciating the huge change the RTC brought to the region in 1992, Principal Stone has been eager to ensure that same positive impact continues to be felt today.

“I think we sent a message out there in 1992 that third level education is not just for as certain cohort coming from certain schools or backgrounds and that, if you had the ability academically, we were there to help you get in” he told The Echo.

“And if you take the number of students, perhaps for whatever reason, wouldn’t have gone on to higher education or university level education only because of RTC Tallaght/IT Tallaght/TU Dublin was there. I mean we’ve put thousands through since 1992 who would never have got that opportunity before and I think that’s the value of what we’ve done. We’ve helped to change people’s lives.

“That kind of ethos or culture started off with Columb and co and all the rest who started off in 1992 and I think it’s safe to say it’s still there in significant measure” he said.

The idea of an RTC in Tallaght was mooted long before its arrival with the prospect of a third-level institute in the heart of the community becoming increasing topical in every election campaign from the mid-1970s.

“The government organised a report into the future of third-level education and it identified the need for colleges to be located in a whole range of industrial areas” recalled Vincent Lennon, an integral figure in the setting up of the college.

Staff of Tallaght Regiona Technical College in September 1992

“Tallaght was identified as one of the locations for a Regional Technical College. There were a number of them around the country, Athlone, Dundalk, Limerick.

“At that stage Regional Technical Colleges were run by Vocational Education Committees. I was working for County Dublin VEC and it was identified as the ‘parent’, so to speak, for this new Regional Technical College in Tallaght.

“It would only be a temporary thing because the government was developing legislation to establish Regional Technical Colleges themselves as separate entities.

“There had been pressure growing all the while for them to gain some class of independence and statutory footing.

“I had worked in the City of Dublin of VEC which used to run Bolton Street, Kevin Street, all of those and I had worked in the College of Commerce in Rathmines, so I had some experience of working in a college.

“At that stage I was the admin’ person for the VEC and we knew this was coming and we also knew the ownership was going to pass over very quickly.

“So for the first year or two, the VEC parent committee acted as the board of management for the RTC and then it got its own under the Regional Technical College Act which came out in 1992.

“At that stage County Dublin VEC had grown from about nine schools in 1978 to about 22 schools in the early nineties. And of that sort of development was in the outlying areas of Dublin where you had Jobstown, Brookfield, Firhouse, all those schools in Clondalkin, St Kevin’s, Collinstown Park, Deansrath.

Eddie Collins, then Head of Dept. of Management and Vincent Lennon, former Academic Affairs and Student Services Manager, leading the Academic procession to St Mary’s Church in 1994 Photo by Brian MacCormaic

“So you had huge growth and already the County Dublin VEC was a growing scheme and was actually bulging at the seams in terms of the amount of work it had and the resources it had to do it.

“Because I had worked in a college, I was asked if I would go across and help set up the admin of it.

“When we advertised for a principal we had interviews and at that stage we were using the upstairs part of the Dominican Priory. They were very generous to us and gave us every help that they could.

“Land had been purchased from them in the 1970s by the Department of Education for the college, so it was far-thinking.

“They had this thing about third level colleges that was emerging out of the economic development of Ireland.

“So we recruited Columb and then we set up a small administration in the upstairs of the Priory, all while the building was going on” he remembered. 

Certainly Dr Collins was relishing his new post and the opportunity of leading a team that would shape this landmark development in Tallaght.

Dr Collins (Pic: Paddy Barrett)

“I had worked for a little in UCD before I went to the RTC in Dundalk. I was in charge of the School of Science up there, and I was quite happy in Dundalk, but it was great in many ways to get back to Dublin and I had been looking out for this.

“I thought that the advent of the RTC in Tallaght would have made a huge difference to the place and I was quite happy to try and get involved in that.

“I was appointed maybe 14 months before the opening and there were about six of us working away on it around the turn of the year [1992] and then we started recruiting staff.

“The economy was awful in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and it was certainly difficult to get a job.

“But it was good for us in one way in that when we advertised for staff we got a huge response and we were able to pick some very talented people and that made a huge difference.

“They were all quite young, so the students were coming into staff not all that much older than them and it helped immediately set up a good relationship between staff and students.

“Some had come from other colleges where the facilities wouldn’t have been as good. Others came from industry where they might or might not have been better.

“But the staff responded very well and they got together very co-operatively which may not always be the case. They worked very well together and with the students and I always had the impression that the students were quite happy at the college.

“We had to have courses to present to the students and the curriculum all worked out so there was a lot of work going on behind the scenes.

“In fact while they were building the college we were up occupying a few rooms in the Priory and working away on it there.

“We moved into the building itself before the students did only by a couple of months I think.

“And then, of course, we had to get equipment into it so there was a huge amount of work going on in that year in the run-up, and for the next couple of years after.

“I think we had about 600 students entering the college in the first year, so it was quite a bang and it wasn’t too long before we had a population of about 2000.

“Then we got an extension later on to go with the millennium and we were able to move it out to 3000, so it was steadily growing and having a good impact on the locality.

“The building that we got was a vast improvement on the original RTC and that helped for the atmosphere in the college.

“I’m not knocking the original RTCs. They were built at a different time. They were functional and they did a job. But it was time to move on.

Thomas Stone who was a lecturer in Tallaght RTC back in  1992 is today principal of TU Dublin Tallaght

“The college set a new standard for everybody and that was great” he stressed.

In terms of technological development globally and the start of a flourishing economy at home, the arrival of the RTC to Tallaght could not have been better timed.

Those elements, combined with other factors such as the advanced physical design of the college and the forward-thinking structure of course curricula taught by a largely young and progressive team of lecturers, helped insure the impact of the new college would be immediately felt by young people in Tallaght and the surrounding regions.

Offering qualifications in the likes of business, science and engineering, the RTC was equipping students with the tools needed to thrive in a society that was developing rapidly in every sense of the word.

“In terms of course design there was a core structure. You had to do all the core subjects, but you did have options then” explained Lennon, who, having held various posts in the likes of Finance, Health and Safety and HR in the college, eventually ended up as Academic Administration and Student Affairs Manager.

“Blocks of learning were broken up into semesters which was very much an American idea.

“This thing operated on the basis of your consistent performance and you’d be getting feedback on how you were doing all the while and where you were going.

“Columb was a bit of a pioneer in that. It was certainly new in the RTC system and very few had it as institutional structure in the university sector.

“Students loved that system because your learning is in 12-14 week blocks and most of the semesters were built around continual assessment that maybe 40 percent of the credits went for, so it didn’t just all depend on how you performed in the exams on the day.

 “You also had staff corrals where you had the likes of economists with engineers and scientists all in the same room.

“He [Dr Collins] mixed the disciplines and there was a synergy that arose out of that.

“Then you had the internet and all that came with that, so technology played a huge part” he added.

Emphasising the benefits financially of the RTC course structure for students and parents, Dr Collins said “Students could work their way towards degrees without having to invest immediately in, say a four-year programme.

“They could do a certificate and then spend another year and do a diploma and the final year they could get up to degree level.

“This was something that was beginning to emerge in the RTCs, but we went for it hell for leather.

“So that was a big incentive for them because, in many cases, students and parents could worry about setting out on a four-year course on which they weren’t too sure how well they were going to do.

“This way, they were able to put their toe in the water and try it out. That ladder system I think was very attractive.

“We had a huge hinterland of houses and industry and so we were able to offer a part-time programme and that was geared very much towards the same thing that we were doing by day.

“So the college emptied out of the full-time students between 5 and 6pm and filled up again with part-time students and I’m glad to say the part-time programme is still going very well. It’s gone from strength to strength.

“I think we shocked the community in our early years because we had a few students graduating in our second year and we had a conferring ceremony in the Dominican Priory.

“We got the students to tog out in their ceremonial gowns in the college and we had a procession down to the Priory and back again afterwards. That would had been in 1994.

“We did have a very small ceremony in ‘93 because we had just one course that was just a year long. That was in the hospitality area and we had within the college.

“These students couldn’t have timed it better, because when the first ones graduated  in 1994 they were going out with several job offers in their pockets because the economy just switched on at that stage” he said.

Guiding students throughout the economic highs of the Celtic Tiger era and the lows of the global recession that followed, the college continues to play a key role in the lives of so many young people and today caters for more than 7000 full-time, part-time and distance students.

“The progression from an RTC back in 1992 to then becoming an Institute of Technology in 1998 and then, on the 1st of January 2019, becoming part of the first Technological University in Ireland, has been huge” insisted Principal Stone.

“Many of us, including me, started in ‘92 and came up through almost the last 30 years.

“I’m not sure that we all planned that that would be our careers, but I think once we got in and started establishing the Institute from scratch, we became and are still very embedded within it, personally as well as professionally.”

And certainly one of the most immersed in that monumental project was Dr Collins who fully appreciates what it meant for the people of Tallaght and for him personally.

“It was great to be able to get the college running and make that impact” he said.

“Tallaght, at that time, was a bit like Limerick on the reputation side, but I think between the college and other significant things like the break-up of Dublin County Council and the formation of South Dublin, it made a huge difference for the area.

“I was there until 2004. It was probably the best time of my life. It was wonderful to be given the job of starting up the college and having all those great people working with me.”

Lennon, himself, echoed those sentiments, insisting “A lot of people had the idea that Tallaght was a concrete jungle.

“It’s a city, an absolute city, and the college along with The Square and the hospital and all those other developments have played a part in that growth.

“But for me, the college was a seminal moment for the development of Tallaght.

“Even after it’s opening, it had to make its way and create its own legend and it did, because the staff and the students were just phenomenal.”

By subscribing to The Echo you are supporting your local newspaper Click Here: Echo Online.