Phoenix: A voting arrangement

When a national plan is devised as in Ireland 2040, it should be delivered, regardless of who is in power. 

Has Ireland any such thing as apolitical delivery? Is voting in Ireland a transactional arrangement? 

We vote for you, you do something for us. It’s a simple equation that many people in Waterford have been very slow to learn. 

They cleave instead to the idea that party X or party Y will do such and such. Really? 

Have we not learned the hard way that delivery is a matter of political expediency and little else? 

Has the present government sufficiently delivered to Waterford city to convince you to give them your vote? 

Leo Varadkar, a man with local roots, resigned as Taoiseach telling us that Waterford and UHW should have much more investment, yet during his tenure, delivery on those sentiments was sparse. 

He was Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment from June 2020 to December 2022. Did we see any major FDI delivery in that period? 

An 800 job announcement for Abbott in Kilkenny raised eyebrows, while Waterford, the designated regional economic driver in Ireland 2040, has been without major new IDA FDI delivery since West Pharma. 

IBM Announcement

Last week’s IBM announcement for Red Hat was positive, albeit unclear on actual local job numbers. It’s a welcome development in emerging technologies.

Message to self: How can it be that not a single new teaching building commenced construction at WIT/ SETU this century? So said TD Matt Shanahan in a recent Dáil exchange with Taoiseach Simon Harris. 

Mr. Harris gave Waterford precious little as Minister for Health and ditto as Minister for Further Education. Now as Taoiseach he commits to an epiphany. Will a Fine Gael Taoiseach deliver in the education and acute medical sectors what he has previously failed to do? 

The last new WIT teaching building commenced in 1998 and finished in 2006 after a pause in construction. That hiatus is grotesque, while a new engineering building has been on the stocks at the Cork Road site since 2009. 

Sadly, under Fine Gael, WIT development was disgracefully halted, both in building and course development, while money and new buildings were poured into Carlow IT to suggest equality with WIT. 

This was “allegedly” from that college’s own resources. Believe that if you will. It was aided and politically abetted by Fine Gael forces to push WIT into a SETU merger. 

Last week, Taoiseach Simon Harris tied himself to the delivery of the new engineering building in his debate with Mr. Shanahan. I’ll believe it when I see it. 

Informed sources suggest the planning permission for the new engineering building expires on August 9, 2024. If it does not start before then, it will require a new planning process and may never be built. That being the case, Waterford should never vote for Fine Gael again. 

Lessons to learn

What lessons have we learned from the regime’s performance over the past 13 years? They kick us in the goolies, we vote for them. They keep us waiting 15 years for a new engineering building, we vote for them. They don’t sign off on 24/7 cardiology, we vote for them! 

Are we that politically naïve? Are we mad? “I always vote for whichever party because my daddy did?” 

Everything has a price in life, including your vote. Throw it away cheaply if you wish, but sense demands that you and yours and your children’s future ability to live in this area should be protected by appropriate state investment on par with our peer cities.

When you shop in Dunne's, you give them money, they give you groceries. That’s a transaction. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand politics. 

We give them our vote, they give us the new engineering building. If they don’t, then why vote for them? 

The same economic logic applies to 24/7 cardiology at UHW, which has been promised so often it’s like “Draining the Shannon”. 

Similarly with our little airport, which is being dragged through the mud by the Greens. If the money for the runway is not signed off by Mr. Ryan, then his local representatives should quickly take themselves back to their previous occupations. 

We are not going to vote for them. It’s a transaction, it's politics. 

If any local election candidate gives you cheek and tells you that “things will be delivered once we get into or back into power”, you know what to say! 

For the life of me, can anyone tell us how Galway and Limerick are entitled to have a full university and a Technical University, while Waterford, the oldest city in the country, must make do with an anonymous one-third portion of an institution whose HQ is in the back of the SETU president’s car? 

For the past 14 years, WIT has been all but eviscerated by FG (and sad to say in 2011-2016 by Labour) party interests. Our college was on the cusp of the full university status (like UL) promised to us in 2008-2011 by Fine Gael. Was it delivered? 

Ask Phil Hogan or Brendan Howlin, those who created the “Waterford must learn to share” meme. They know how and why WIT was eviscerated by regional politics and the central university (like UL) the region needed fatally undermined.

Has Waterford city kept pace with its once peer cities of Limerick and Galway? Local employment is good, but job quality must be improved. 

There has been a welcome and visible uptick in staffing at UHW in line with all HSE hospitals. 

SETU has bought the old glass site. 

But a visit to Limerick and Galway is chastening. The comparative evidence suggests that we are lagging. 

Is this a deliberate policy? The North Quays, delivered by a Fianna Fáil minister, is a great infrastructure project, which may eventually rebalance matters. A planning application for development has been submitted by Harcourt Developments. 

But ask yourself the extent to which local business confidence was and is undermined by the perception that Waterford city does not have FG ministers at its back, as Limerick and Galway certainly do.

Balanced regional development, as in the Programme for Government, should not be at the mercy of party politics, but remember, it's politics, a transactional arrangement!