Phoenix: A lost generation

Last Friday it was announced by Minister for Further Education James Lawless that construction will start on the new engineering block at South East Technological University (SETU) on the Cork Road in Waterford city. 

It’s hard to cheer and be gracious to our political masters just because the system has finally decided to comply with its own published national plans. 

Balanced Regional Development? It’s great to see, albeit much of the good that we should be celebrating has been knocked out of the project news by its long history of delay and obfuscation. A whole generation of development and investment in the educational future of this city and its children has been lost. 

The start on the new building puts an end to what was perhaps the most odious episode in modern Irish third-level education.

More words have been written about that development here than almost any other development in Waterford, other than UHW. But then, the pattern is the same across the board. 

Waterford has always had, other than during the ministerial service of Martin Cullen, a huge problem in attracting government capital investment, most particularly in those areas like education, medicine and Foreign Direct Investment, which impinge on the interests of other cities. Especially Cork. 

There has been a huge rebound in the government’s fiscal position since 2011. €18 billion a year is being spent on capital infrastructure, yet the cumulative share of that investment, which came our way, always seems on the small side. 

If it was food we sought, it’s sometimes not hard to imagine we might starve? 

The Cork medical/commercial/educational apparatus barely countenances any development in this part of the world. 

Micheál Martin is hardly shy about his support for his home town, even when that support looks a little bit skewed. 

Anyway, James Lawless, the Minister for Further Education is a Fianna Fáil TD, so make of that what you will. 

In any event, WIT, which was on the cusp of independent university status in 2006, was almost destroyed for that aspiration. Nothing has been built at the WIT Cork Road site for over 20 years. Just roll that little piece of information around in your head for a while. 

The last thing built there was the Humanities Building in the vee between the Cork Road and Browne’s Road. That was started circa 1999 and finished in 2006. 

Carlow IT, which was joined with WIT to create SETU, is getting another new building under the same scheme as SETU Waterford. Five new buildings have been built in Carlow IT with HEA support in the past decade and a new corporate services building was opened there last week.

Minister John Cummins was only a youngster when the last capital investment was made on the Cork Road. He is an alumnus of UL, who well knows what a university campus looks like. 

He is our ministerial hope for the future. 

He and Minister Mary Butler simply must aggressively drive on the Waterford agenda. Mr. Cummins announced last December that the cabinet had signed off on the new engineering building to start in quarter 1, 2025. It’s now quarter 3! What’s another half year when added to a 20-year wait anyway? 

That 20-year delay was utterly egregious given the stiff competition for students from legacy universities and new TUs, all of whom have gleaming new infrastructure on offer. 

TU Dublin alone has spent €1 billion on new facilities in recent years. Everything built by government in Waterford in the same period, including the North Quays, hardly amounts to that huge sum. Development here is slow-walked until people almost lose heart. The 12-year campaign for 24/7 cardiology, albeit not yet in place, seems speedy by comparison with developments at WIT/SETU, but what Waterford does offer is resilience and an unwillingness to depart the stage.

With a three-year construction period, we may not see our new engineering building until 2028. The damage done to SETU/WIT, especially since Fine Gael came to power in 2011 and allowing for Covid, procurement and other difficulties, borders on the sinful. 20 years ago WIT was as big as UL, DCU or Maynooth. All these institutions now have twice its student numbers and have built many, many new buildings on their campuses. Why Waterford and WIT/SETU were singled out for such shocking repression is beyond me, but it smacked of a combined traditional university, HEA and departmental desire to “put manners” on our aspirations. 

We were chopped off at the knees and anyone who defends what happened is an idiot! 

Hopefully, we are entering a period where a fairer, more apolitical system of state investment will apply.

IBM announcement

The announcement by IBM of 75 software engineering jobs in Waterford last week cheered everyone up. 

IBM last year announced another 800 high-tech jobs in Ireland by 2027. These new roles, spanning R&D, digital sales and consulting operations, were spread across Dublin, Cork and Waterford. 

It is not clear how many of those jobs announced have been created or if the newly announced jobs are also at Red Hat, but these matters will become clearer in due course. 

The announcement is a terrific vote of confidence in Waterford and indeed in SETU.

It was interesting to read the comments of Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism & Employment, who welcomed the announcement, saying: “It reflects the government’s commitment to supporting regional development and fostering strong partnerships between industry and academia. 

"I commend IBM for its continued confidence in Ireland and for its collaboration with the South-East Technological University.” 

This was followed by Jack Chambers, Minister for Public Expenditure & Reform, saying: “I welcome this very positive development which underscores Ireland’s attractiveness as a location for businesses to invest in and to expand R&D operations. We are committed to supporting research and development in our tech sector, including in the South-East of our country, to drive balanced, regional development and economic growth.” 

Everyone is for balanced regional development. It has to be the way forward for Ireland. Dublin is simply overcooked to its own and Ireland’s detriment. The new pedestrian bridge, North Quays development, surgical hub construction, engineering building commencement and IBM jobs are a giant step towards the development of Waterford as a true regional city.