The Coonagh Campus will accommodate an additional 800 students.
Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Patrick O’Donovan TD, opened new state-of-the-art Coonagh Campus, that serves as part of the Technological University of the Shannon, on Friday, April 26. The new campus takes a focus on engineering students.
The new TUS campus aims to drive the expansion of engineering education and research. The newly finished building includes new workshops and laboratories that now have the space for manufacturing, engineering, and all other engineering activities.
The Coonagh Campus, which is made up of a 5,819 sq/m engineering building, will accommodate an additional 800 students, putting an emphasis on the increasing the number of apprenticeships at the university.
The new campus, now located in Coonagh, would not have been made possible without the government funding of €27.5 million.
Minister O’Donovan believes the opening of this newly extended campus sets a standard for further development in higher education in the region.
Patrick O’ Donovan said: “This state-of-the-art campus represents a key phase of TUS’s development and demonstrates the Government’s commitment to supporting excellence in higher education and to delivering on the ambitions of Project Ireland 2040.”
Head of Capital Programmes at the Higher Education Authority, Ciarán McCaffrey believes that the launch of the new campus, with a specific emphasis on apprenticeship can be “transformative for the regions.”
Speaking at the official opening, President of TUS, Professor Vincent Cunnane said: “At TUS, we work hard to maintain our educational ethos and our laser focus on employability for our graduates, plugged into the needs of industry. We have an ambition to grow, but not to dilute what we do and how we do it, and Coonagh Campus embodies this ambition.”
