Phoenix: Non illegitimi carborundum?

Translate that hoary old bit of dog Latin as you wish and if it offends some political parties in the run-up to a General Election on November 29, let the cap fit! The sentiment is widespread across the city and will increasingly emerge in the General Election campaign. That feeling, which is all about investment, encapsulated in the airport runway debacle, failure to fund development at SETU and provide 24/7 cardiology, won’t easily disappear. 

After five years of the present government, Waterford’s share of whatever goodies and funding were going, to put it mildly, is on the low side. It’s hard to contemplate that failure of political equity. €44 billion in capital spending during this government’s term and Waterford received €29 and 9 cent. Well, a bit more than that, in community and sports grants, and other small change bribes (the North Quays drums are already sounding), while the important money went elsewhere. 

Can we be bought off with pennies, or don’t we understand the political processes that deliver billions to some areas and small change to others? As far as we are concerned, our best hope is to “keep on, keeping on"?

Will Hutton in a recent Guardian newspaper column wrote: “There is a consensus among economists that a precondition for higher growth is higher levels of investment and that one of the most certain ways of lifting investment levels is for the state to provide a lead.” Waterford welcomed the North Quays investment on that basis, but where is the real investment in SETU, in the engineering building PPP, which has been dragged through the mud for 15 years, or in new IDA-driven FDI? Worries about the buyout of Bausch and Lomb by US vulture capitalists highlight anxieties over exposure of the local economy to the fortunes of one large company. 

The IDA has not delivered that critical diversity of industry, seen in other cities, in Waterford. UHW has belated investment in a new surgical hub, similar to Limerick and Galway, but promised 24/7 cardiology is still absent and critical investment in bed capacity, Out Patients Department and many other services has not appeared. One need only go to Limerick or Galway to see massive investment across all these metrics, medical, third-level educational and FDI, to understand why people in Waterford city feel left out.

Mendacity and the political economy with the truth so often associated with it come increasingly to mind. It was really upsetting to hear Green Party ex-leader Eamonn Ryan spout about his “support” for Waterford Airport and how the “business case” needs to be strengthened. A belated attempt to save the Dáil seat of Marc Ó Cathasaigh? Conventional wisdom says it’s too late for that. Mr Ryan’s dismissal of Waterford showed in 2020 when he failed to appoint Mr Ó Cathasaigh, (from a constituency with a Green MEP, TD and several councillors) as a junior minister. Instead, he picked the Offaly county councillor Pippa Hackett from obscurity, made her a senator and brought her into cabinet as a super junior. 

Ryan has slow-walked every aspect of a simple ask: to provide funding for a strategic airport facility to help our city and the South East region develop. When €25m can be found to refurbish Dalymount Park in Dublin, a city replete with sports facilities, you have to question what’s going on. Listening to the whimperings of local Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael representatives and their party leaders absolving themselves from the airport debacle by blaming the Greens, is worse. They all share the blame.

We had three or four asks for this government in 2020, among them 24/7 cardiology, airport runway extension and new engineering building for WIT/SETU. Monstrous sums of money have been spent all over the country, but our asks are relegated to the also rans. Fine Gael as the largest party carries most of the blame. They seem unable to treat Waterford fairly for reasons that have a lot to do with its traditional membership among the influential large farmer class in Carlow/Kilkenny/Wexford. The party’s failure to give the go ahead for the proposed WIT/SETU engineering building in a saga going back to 2008 has really hurt third level education in Waterford city.

Last week in the USA, anger and resentment surfaced to return the awful Trump to the White House. Most political observers highlighted the fact that whole cities and communities in that vastly wealthy country had been ignored by a political elite. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that Brexit was caused by the same sentiments. People in parts of the UK felt ignored and bypassed. Regardless of what results the upcoming election throws up in this constituency, a latent anger with how the government treats the city of Waterford will play a part. Sinn Féin, also, has hardly had Waterford to the fore. 

There are only five cities in this republic, Waterford is currently the smallest. The election may result in a flight to security, a vote for the governing parties in light of the Trump election and its possible economic consequences for Ireland, but no one in Waterford, no one, believes that our city has ever been treated by Fine Gael-led governments since 2011 on anything like the same terms as its one-time peers of Limerick and Galway.

A recent Sunday Times analysis of the Waterford constituency described it as “a key constituency where local issues have national relevance”. It continued, ”Sinn Fein’s success in Waterford is perhaps due to the feeling that the constituency has been deprived of decades of government investment with the dominant narrative being that Waterford is terrible and something must be done about it. For example, while Waterford has SETU it does not have a traditional university, making it the only Irish city without one.” I do not believe that Waterford is “terrible” but you won’t find anyone in this city, other than the most tone-deaf political party supporters, who believes that Waterford has had a fair crack of the whip. The gap between us and our once-peer cities is now enormous. Waterford people know it. We do travel you know, we are not blind. Our voice will be heard on November 29th next.