A distress signal?

“The South East enters Budget 2027 with the State’s widest regional output gap, a planning framework that has designated but not resourced its city, and a two decade record of commitments not converted into delivered capital. 

Project Ireland 2040 named Waterford as one of five cities meant to drive Ireland’s growth, with a target to grow by 50–60% by 2040. 

The plan is failing because, after naming Waterford as a growth city, the government never followed through with the sustained funding that built Cork, Limerick and Galway into major cities.” 

This is from Waterford Chamber’s pre-budget submission to the Dept. of Finance. The submission itself is a damning indictment of national politics and local politicians. Page after page, line after line, paragraph after paragraph repeats in graphic detail the obscene failure of the present regime to fund critical development in Waterford. “The evidence base assembled for the submission is drawn from published Government data: the DPER Capital Tracker, the CSO national accounts, Eurostat regional statistics, and parliamentary questions. Every figure cited is verifiable and sourced. 

The region is not asking for exceptional treatment. It is asking for capital allocations proportionate to its population, a State that delivers on the commitments already made in the Programme for Government and the National Planning Framework, and a budgetary system that stops re-ratifying the existing distribution of public resources every October without examining whether it is equitable.” 

The worm turns, and even the perpetually reticent Waterford Chamber has had enough. When they are complaining, you’re bunched!

You saw the government failure to fund Waterford Airport. If John Cummins and Mary Butler were capable of being embarrassed, which they patently are not, they would never show their faces in the city again. Vote for us they said and everything will be all right. 

The only thing that’s alright, are three projects from the last government, North Quays, SETU Engineering block and UHW surgical hub. 

One Chamber line tells the current story: “Since SETU was established in May 2022, it has received just €27.2 million in government funding, the lowest of the five technological universities.” 

The failure of our two local ministers to use these basic metrics to challenge the Taoiseach and their senior ministers to deliver something like equity is grotesque. The inability of pathetic local political organisations to raise a whimper is shocking.

The chamber has bitten the bullet and sent up an alarmingly necessary distress flare. Do they now have the balls to stand up what they have written and sent to government, while publicly facing down M/s Cummins and Butler?

I went from reading that litany of failure to David Cullinane’s Facebook page where a presumed supporter wrote, ”good man David, you’re the only one delivering for Waterford”. What is going on in peoples’ heads? David Cullinane for good or bad is in the Dáil since 2011. In that time he has delivered nothing to Waterford. On that record and in pursuit of some idea of “change” which for us is absolutely necessary, the burghers of Dungarvan elected a second SF TD in 2024. Since then Mr McGuinness has delivered nothing to Waterford or Dungarvan. The reason is simple. Opposition deputies can’t deliver anything. 

As we approach the next election, government non-delivery and the SF inability to influence matters will become clearer. Economic output per person in this region was €41,303 in 2023, only 45% of the national average. This gap hasn’t closed under current national planning policies. 

Between 2019 and 2024, the region’s economy grew by just 8.2%, compared to 40.2% growth nationally. Dublin’s economy is now more than twelve times bigger than the South East’s, even though it only has three times the population.”(Waterford Chamber) The political ramifications of that at next election will be enormous.

Again, in plain English, which Waterford Chamber is effectively repeating line by line, there is not a single, serious Waterford project in road, rail, port, airport, acute medicine, community medicine, third level education, FDI or anything else, at planning permission or tender stage. Government has taken a nuke to the status of Waterford city and the silence from local regime apparatchiks, is deafening. Decades of learning nothing and forgetting nothing!

One example: “UHW is the Model 4 hospital serving the South East, covering around 558,000 people across Carlow, Kilkenny, Waterford, Wexford and South Tipperary. A bed capacity study for Waterford found the hospital is short by 413 acute beds, compared to similar hospitals elsewhere in the country. UHW currently has 0.69 beds per 1,000 people in its catchment area, just 56% of the national average (1.23 per 1,000) and only 48% of the level used to fund hospitals in Limerick, Galway and Cork (1.43 per 1,000). 

This is a problem right now, not just something that might happen in future and it’s based on current population figures, not future growth projections”. (Waterford Chamber).

Last week there were large numbers of people on trolleys in hospitals around the country per INMO figures. There were none in UHW. Our hospital staff has worked extraordinarily hard to ensure people are not on trolleys and drive its reputation as a centre of excellence. 

Its regional cancer centre for the South East has become a member of the prestigious Organisation of European Cancer Institutes. That excellent performance brought promises of extra beds and physical expansion. They have been pulled by a corrupt government. 

Meanwhile, the trolley situation in Limerick prompted the INMO to say: “There are over 80 patients on trolleys right across the hospital. So it's never ending". A new unit opened at UHL last October with almost 100 beds however, INMO says it has not provided "any real improvement"

“The hospital is experiencing high attendances, but we (INMO) would question whether all of those attendances and admission to the hospital are required. There should be an independent examination on the presentations and the decisions to admit at UHL because they are extraordinarily high.” 

Meanwhile in UHW…..!

Budget 2027 marks the halfway point of Project Ireland 2040, the point at which the government either properly funds Waterford’s designation as a growth city, or effectively accepts that this plan will not be delivered here. 

It’s time to get off our knees folks, or else, what’s it to be, second class citizenship?