Phoenix: Rescue 117...

No, not the search and rescue helicopter based in Waterford Airport, instead, today’s date, May 20, marks the 117th day since the formation of the present government.

Government has had 117 days to execute the decision they made on December 11, 2024, to begin construction on the SETU new engineering block at the Cork Road campus. 

Last week, a muted cheer arose when the chosen contractor, BAM, published a commencement date of Thursday, May 15, for the project. The banners and bunting have been waiting a long time for this and the PR releases have apparently been ready for some weeks. 

We have waited a long time for the investment famine to end and much credit is due to all, including the politicians, who worked for so long to bring this to fruition.

After nearly 20 years, it will be great to see building development at SETU Cork Road, even though much of the excitement over this announcement has been sucked out of it by terrible delay. 

Readers are reminded that the engineering building was first designed in 2007, got planning in 2009 and was cancelled in 2011. 

The project was revived in 2017, got planning again in 2019 and was dropped in favour of Cork and Dublin projects from the first bundle of the Higher Education PPP in 2020. 

Planning lapsed in 2024 and had to be reapplied for in late 2024. 

The building may come on stream for the academic year 2028/9. 

Recite that litany of unconscionable delay and ask yourself if anything like this has ever happened in Limerick or Galway, our supposed peer cities? 

No other third level institution in Ireland has suffered such a draconian suppression, with not a new building in 20 years. 

Entire academic cities have been built in other colleges and universities, not least in Dublin. TUD has spent over €1 billion on its new Grangegorman campus. 

While Waterford suffered undeniable educational investment apartheid, Carlow IT, now SETU Carlow, built five new buildings. The dead hand of regional politics weighed heavy on us. 

The actual halting of development projects damaged SETU and the Waterford city economy. It has impacted students and prolonged the brain drain from the South East region. 

Indeed, Waterford city continues to subsidise educational provision in legacy universities in the richer cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway.

Is that the rationale for Micheál Martin's failure to promote Mary Butler to cabinet? 

Better to have her neutered as the Chief Whip than having a vote in cabinet as Minister for Children, kowtowing to the party leader. 

When a Fianna Fáil Mayor of Waterford must write to the Fianna Fáil government Chief Whip to organise a meeting about Waterford Airport with Fianna Fáil Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien and can’t get anywhere, you don’t have to be able to read the tea leaves for an answer! 

No response to the letter. What kind of bullshit is that? 

Is Mr Martin’s choice of Wexford’s James Browne as Minister for Housing a tactical ploy? How likely is Minister Browne to support SETU or UHW development in Waterford do you think? 

Mr Martin might just as easily have made Norma Foley Minister for Housing and given Deputy Browne the Chief Whip’s job without any political demur. 

Is his default position to suppress anything and everything in Waterford until that situation becomes untenable? Is that what we saw with 24/7 cardiology? It was announced when all the miserable delay and obfuscation was finally shown for the perversion of the truth they were by the National Office of Clinical Audit. 

Imagine a decade of government reports being negative to UHW, on the basis that our hospital was not submitting appropriate data to the Acute Coronary Syndrome programme? That figures for UHW procedures were not available? That’s the message that the Department of Health and the HSE were selling.

Meanwhile, in the land of milk and honey known as Dublin we find that the proposed new National Maternity Hospital on the grounds of St Vincent’s Hospital is likely to cost 10 times as much as originally costed, approximately €2 billion. 

Just to match the €2.5 billion for the new National Children’s Hospital. 

There is not a planning permission for any acute Waterford health care development on the stocks at present. The failure to progress a range of projects beyond the HSE “Appraisal Stage” haunts us. 

The proposed vertical Out Patients Department at UHW has gone astray. 

A raft of other projects are axle deep in the HSE morass, awaiting a political push. 

Even Minister Butler’s personal, years' old priority, a new UHW Adult Mental Health Unit, is lagging. 

The new surgical hub at Maypark Lane is an extremely welcome development, but UHW needs investment like that every year for a decade to bring its physical capacity up to date. 

The lack of a PET scanner at UHW, a regional cancer centre and Model 4 hospital, as highlighted by WLR FM, is truly instructive. When you manage huge demand with relatively inadequate resources, when you have no patients on trolleys, when you are not in the headlines, your reward is invisibility.

Anyway, not to be a dog in the manger, it must be repeated that the new engineering building start has given everyone at SETU Waterford a real boost. Happy at last, to hear the sound of investment being put in place. 

The announcement that researchers from the Ocular Therapeutics Research Group have secured the prestigious Innovision Cofund, a €3.1 million collaborative research programme focused on addressing the global challenges of ocular disease and sight loss, is a huge tribute to the excellence of the institution and the people involved. Lead by Dr Laurence Fitzhenry, Principal Investigator of the Ocular Therapeutics Research Group (OTRG) in the Pharmaceutical Molecular Biotechnology Research Centre (PMBRC), and OTRG Research Group Manager, Tess Ames, this marks a major milestone. 

SETU is the first Technological University in Ireland to coordinate a Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Cofund programme. 

Eds and Meds are the future for our city as the renaissance and reorientation of Waterford gathers pace. 

The arrival this week of the new North Quays access bridge is a visible sign of exciting times ahead.