Phoenix: A fair share

A recent article by Fionnán Sheehan in the Independent asked rhetorically “How Dublin takes lion's share of multinational jobs”. 

He went on: “The capital takes the lion’s share of multinationals’ jobs and gets most FDI attention, as other regions lag behind. Dublin got 2,275 site visits in the past decade. The IDA says 55pc of FDI jobs are in companies outside of Dublin – but this was 60pc a decade ago.” 

This article followed up on comments by Wexford Fianna Fáil TD Malcom Byrne, who suggested on South East Radio that Waterford was getting much more IDA exposure than Wexford. As ever, it would be far better if South East TDs questioned the national allocation of resources rather than flogging the “everything is going to Waterford” hare. 

The reality, according to the SEEM report, is that the South East has 9% of the country’s population and 5% of the FDI jobs. That deficit is obvious in Waterford and across the region. 

Deputy Byrne must know that the National Planning Framework, Ireland 2040, supports the growth of Waterford with Cork, Limerick and Galway as potential counterweights to the decades-long runaway growth of Greater Dublin. Successive governments have only paid lip service to the aims of the NPF, and its predecessor, the National Spatial Strategy.

Given the current policy position of US President Donald Trump on pharma and tech, much of this may be moot anyway, but the wider implications of government spending must be kept in mind. 

The South East economy grew just 8% since 2019, as opposed to 40% growth in the national economy. That is immediately obvious to anyone who visits Dublin. 

The Irish Times can publish articles about the regional centres of Cork, Limerick and Galway and print maps of cycle routes around the coast without showing Waterford city, yet we don’t read calls from the paper of record for balanced regional investment here. 

Many Dublin-based civil servants and media commentators think Ireland ends at the M50! 

Most locals know that comparisons with Dublin and Cork are now beyond risible, but understand that a yawning gap has opened between Waterford and its once peer cities of Limerick and Galway, driven by legacy university-led growth and investment.

Waterford was sold the SETU idea by government. All its south eastern regional TDs promised a game changer. SETU needs to double in size to halt the brain drain as the legacy city universities continue to expand and hoover up student numbers. 

The new PPP building on the SETU Cork Road campus stabilises the existing situation after a grotesque 20-year wait for new facilities but transformative investment is needed to grow. There is no sign of that arriving. 

UCC is preparing to build a €100 million new business school in Cork city centre. UL is to develop a major city centre campus in Limerick. TCD focuses its energy on property purchases to grow its city centre offer, yet SETU Waterford, going against the national trend, must relinquish its city centre Department of Architecture in Hanover Street and its College Street Humanities campus to Waterford Wexford ETB when the PPP building on the Cork Road is complete. 

Does this seem like a recipe for expansion to anyone? One step forward, two steps back?

This column has long backed the idea of pedestrianisation and better presentation as the way forward for a city seeking a better future. A recent column in the Irish Examiner by Colm O’Regan, “Wonderful Waterford is going places”, made pleasant reading. 

"I haven’t spoken to enough Waterford people to understand what Waterford got right. But the few answers I got all said, in local government, there were the right people in the right jobs at the right time with the right attitude to change an Irish city for the better." 

Many locals are uncomfortable with such praise as it goes against the conventional wisdom that our council can get nothing right. 

That being said, though, the city is changing. Research by the UK NGO Centre for Cities says that where city centres have issues that the problem is not cosmetic but rather economic. Our council has done a huge amount on the cosmetic side and the museums and presentation in the Viking Triangle are second to none. 

If Eds and Meds (third-level education and acute medicine) and FDI will drive our future, then SETU and UHW have to get more investment. People will, of course, point to the very welcome North Quays development, the SETU PPP building and the UHW surgical hub as indications of intent. The former is merely bridging a shabby 20-year investment gap and the latter is a Department of Health initiative outside the generality of HSE development. 

IDA-led FDI is a work in progress and the unwillingness to fund our small airport in a landscape dominated by Dublin’s €2.5 billion National Children’s Hospital and a possible €20 billion spend on Metro North speaks to the policy blindness of a Dublin-centric government. Of course Dublin as the capital naturally consumes massive sums for its development, but could we not do better on south eastern regional development and emulate Denmark or other Scandinavians?

Has SETU Waterford a single project at the planning permission stage at present? 

The only project with planning in UHW at present is a “vertical” Out Patients Department to be built over part of the existing hospital. This was described to a February 2022 meeting of Oireachtas members as vital to the development of the hospital. 

Planning was granted in July 2022. 

A capital submission was reviewed and approved by the HSE’s National Capital & Property Steering Committee for the Outpatient Department (OPD) project at University Hospital Waterford in February 2023. 

The project is an OPD consisting of 36 consulting rooms, four treatment rooms, four measurement rooms and two virtual consulting rooms. It awaits funding. 

Must we wait until the planning permission nearly expires or has to be renewed before we see progress? Or will it be like the Children’s Therapy Hub (part-funded by Touching Hearts) at St Otteran’s, or the Adult Mental Health Unit at UHW, which are at the HSE “appraisal stage” since Adam was a boy? Minister Mary Butler must know!