Catching up?

Last week came news that the Swedish IKEA company is to open a planning and design outlet at the junction of the Cork and Tramore roads. 

At the same time, work is in progress on the Outer Ring Road where B&Q are to shortly move into the Homebase premises and Mr. Price announced a new store in Lisduggan Shopping Centre. 

News of these three retail investments was individually known in recent weeks, but last week’s concrete progress was very welcome. The great financial crash of 2008 hurt this city badly. 

The general decline in building construction which affected the whole country was exacerbated here by the closure of Waterford Crystal with the loss of nearly 1000 jobs. 

The non-transferable nature of glass making skills to the newer economy of tech and pharma production meant that former Crystal workers were particularly hard hit.

The knock on effect on the city’s retail footfall and general commercial spend was difficult and many would say that we are only now beginning to recover from the damage to the local economy. It is hardly surprising to learn from the CSO last week that net income in Waterford is the second lowest of all Munster counties.

In a fairer world the campaign for a university in Waterford, which nearly came to fruition in the first decade of the 21st century, would have been successful. 

Had this happened it would have transformed Waterford’s ability to recover from the 2008 crash. 

The FF governments from 1997 to 2011 were mostly well disposed to the idea although it is widely alleged that Micheál Martin and Mary Hanafin were outright opposed to the idea in cabinet. 

Despite that opposition, development of the WIT site on the Cork Road and in Carriganore continued apace. FF’s last planning application for the Cork Road campus, for two new buildings, engineering and business schools, was made in 2009 as part of a PPP. It is a matter of public record that the incoming FG government of Enda Kenny cancelled that PPP in 2011. It is quite amazing that that new government seemed to launch a concerted attack on WIT and WRH as they were named at the time, to downgrade both institutions. 

While Waterford was economically prone, heavyweight ministers were determined to apply the coup de grâce to our established city status.

Local resilience prevented the worst excesses of this attack, but I can find no one in the business or commercial sphere in Waterford who can convincingly argue that this city benefitted to the same extent as Limerick and Galway during the massive rebound boom after 2011.

A new proposal to incorporate both WIT schools in a new engineering building was revived by FG in 2017. Planning was applied for in 2019 but lapsed in 2024. It was re-applied for in 2024 and the cabinet signed off on the programme in early December 2024.

Despite hints that the building would commence in Q1 of 2025, nothing has happened. WIT was kneecapped and shamefully deprived of capital investment by FG led governments for their own political, regional ends, while new buildings sprang up like asparagus in May on campuses all around the country. 

As April drifts into May 2025, without a shovel on site at SETU Cork Road campus, it is surely time for someone to break the deafening silence which surrounds the proposed new engineering building project. 

College president Prof Veronica Campbell has been emphatic that the new building would go ahead. The delay has to be confronted. The Mayor of Waterford and the President of the Chamber of Commerce must speak out with Professor Campbell about this intolerable, politically driven delay. 

The headline figures for investment to bring SETU to competitive university status has been long publicised at €350m or thereabouts. Has any of that investment at all appeared, or are we faced with more unfulfilled “election” promises?

It is often said that Waterford politicians are reluctant to publicly criticize government, preferring instead the “working in the background” method. 

The state investment record in Waterford suggests that this strategy “excuse” has produced poor returns. The success of the 24/7 cardiology campaign clearly showed that government responds to public pressure and little else. Even still, it will take a year or more to achieve this service as the HSE and its merry men march to the sound of a different drum.

This is not about portraying ourselves as victims. The equitable provision of acute medical facilities is no different than the delivery of equity in third level education or Foreign Direct Investment. 

The deficit in those last two has constrained Waterford city in the past decade even though the political narrative would have you believe otherwise. National commercial, tourism and retail sectors are expert in analyzing urban deficits and translating them into investment decisions for retail, hotel and commercial development.

It doesn’t take an expert to look around our city centre and the absence of development in the past decade. Private investment is driven by business confidence based on systemic public investments. That confidence was palpable during the ministerial tenure of Martin Cullen when an atmosphere of “can do” pervaded the city business community. 

Locals can convincingly point to the efforts of some heavyweight ministers in the 2011 FG led government to destroy, through attacks on the status of WIT and WRTC, the confidence that Cullen had instilled.

In the past few years we have seen a welcome uptick in staff, consultant numbers and budget at UHW. This has led to a general improvement in the profile of the hospital and an appreciation of its status as one of only nine Model 4 hospitals in the state. 

WIT/SETU has seen nothing like that despite the announcement of future new degree courses in vet and pharmacy. Investment in new FDI industry has similarly lagged.

The failure to sign off on paltry investment for our airport shames our FF and FG ministers. 

Waterford is billed as the oldest city in Ireland. Old places survive even when times are tough. The resilience and resistance to urban status downgrading of Waterford attempted by some in government a decade ago has shown that we are, despite their miserable and thwarted efforts, citizens of no mean city!