Phoenix: Is Waterford being actively pushed by the IDA?

323. Please note that number. A total of 323 FDI investments were secured by IDA Ireland during 2025, representing a 38% increase on the previous year. 

As far as I can ascertain, only one of these investments came to Waterford. That was IBM/Red Hat. The exact number of roles to be created is expected to be around 75. 

That record 323 is the highest number of projects secured by the agency and is expected to deliver over 15,300 new jobs in the coming years. 

It is well documented that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) jobs are the highest paying in Ireland and have a huge impact wherever they are located.

It is a constant refrain that FDI companies decide themselves as to where they will locate, but of course this underestimates the subtle hints and nudges, which generally accompany these decisions. I would take it with a pinch of salt. It certainly is not clear that Waterford as a location is being actively pushed by the IDA. 

The 2025 South East Economic Monitor (SEEM) report says that IDA supported jobs in Waterford declined, while they increased in Kilkenny. It is widely reported in local business circles that when a large medical devices industry came looking to Waterford that the IDA were unable to offer a strategic site. The company was directed elsewhere. 

How long is it, perhaps Minister John Cummins could tell us, since a capital heavy IDA project landed in Waterford? Does anyone believe that we are getting a fair shake...in anything?

The benefits of FDI companies are obvious when you read that SETU is getting a new €11.5 million computer system through an educational loan, thanks to IBM. The IBM z17 mainframe, used for around 70pc of global transactions by value, will help support students and researchers develop their skills. More than 60 existing servers across SETU will be consolidated onto a single system. 

IBM’s Ireland general manager Nathan Cullen says, “Our latest collaboration with SETU builds on a wider programme of education and research engagement across the country, all of which are focused on helping people develop practical capabilities for the technologies shaping modern enterprise.” 

SETU is introducing level 9 certificates in mainframe technologies and AI to benefit more than 1,000 computing students.

One social media post suggested, “it’s because of the historical and growing relationship between Red Hat (IBM-owned) and the college. Red Hat has gone from strength to strength in Waterford, with a huge percentage of the workforce being SETU graduates. This has upped IBM’s commitment to the region. When they are literally shuttering other offices, they are expanding in Waterford. Students will have the opportunity to access insane levels of compute for research projects. This is massive for the college and region.” Sounds good to me!

WIT’s value to Waterford was clear back in the noughties. The college was booming. A surge towards university status was destroyed by government between 2008 and 2011. A miserable, politically inspired period of zero investment, no new buildings and no new courses followed until 2025 in a wretched attempt to undermine this city. A similar attack, for such it is, to halt the development of our small airport continued an obvious pattern.

A recent academic paper from MTU Kerry suggests the TU project is failing for reasons varying from massive expansion of the legacy university sector, under-resourcing, chaotic funding mechanisms, declining student numbers, loss of regional provision and loss of regional autonomy. They say, “Our conclusion is that the Irish Technological University Project has been a costly waste of money, that it has wreaked havoc on institutional structures across the country and that, if one considers the destruction of institutional cultures and the loss of regional autonomy, it far outstrips the disastrous Irish Government Decentralisation of 2003-2011.” 

Regardless of our struggles in Waterford, does that Kerry analysis apply here? Waterford was always different and SETU will succeed with parity of esteem and a proper professorial, funding and financial structure. We cannot allow it to be like the curate’s egg, good in parts and, yes, SETU Waterford has been treated shabbily in terms of physical infrastructure. Veterinary medicine and pharmacy will make a difference even if it’s only perception, but the clincher will be a graduate entry medical school. 

We have UHW plus all the consultants and educational facilities necessary. Why not a 25 medical student annual intake? As with 24/7 cardiology, effort prevails. Minister Mary Butler in Dept. of Health, please note.

We’ll come back to that another day. Suffice it to say that most of what happened in the non-legacy university sector over the past four decades was almost entirely driven by Waterford pressure for university designation. 

In the political move to restrain WIT for the past 15 years, Carlow was pushed ahead with massive capital investment. What Carlow needed, being within an hour’s commute of multiple Dublin universities, is completely different to Waterford. In a country where most development is Dublin-centric, the only urban requirement necessary, unless you are politically favoured, is proximity to the capital. Hence, towns like Drogheda, Arklow or Carlow develop as overspill from Dublin and for little other inherent reason. 

Unless government action exceptionally favours Waterford, and that is not obvious at present, laissez faire policy will continue Dublin’s sprawl across mid-Leinster with all its attendant problems. That this runs counter to national policy doesn’t bother policymakers.

For years, the entire medical and political establishment told us Waterford could not have radiotherapy for cancer treatment. The same ugly coalition of politics and medical vested interests told us we could not have 24/7 interventional cardiology. They told us we could not and should not have an airport runway extension. The “system” says we don’t need these things and we keep throwing that rejection back in their faces. We might be poor but we’re not stupid. They keep ignoring their own national policies and our political representatives accept it. 

There is not a single current state project planning permission or tender extant for Waterford in acute medicine, third-level education, rail, road, port, FDI or airport. We want balanced regional development, but Government inaction runs counter to stated policy. Maybe when Minister Butler and Cummins can explain why, we might understand the way this city is being treated.