Phoenix: The investment gap

It has not been explained to anyone’s satisfaction why €19,000 per capita should be spent in the Dublin region under the National Planning Framework (NPF) up to 2040, while only €7,000 per head should be spent in the southern region, which includes Waterford. 

Mutterings of discontent have been heard from Cork, while John Moran, the elected mayor of Limerick city and county, is asking pertinent questions. The Southern Regional Assembly has also raised concerns. 

“While we recognise some positive developments, major structural and geographic investment imbalances still exist.” 

Dublin, we’re told, needs high-profile, high-cost projects to develop its “global city” status. The uncontrolled €2.4 billion cost, so far, of the new National Children’s Hospital indicates the willingness to pump massive public monies into vanity projects in Dublin as a kind of “dole” to keep the big party there going. 

Is there any serious attempt to develop Waterford in line with the aims of the NPF, which allocates 50% of the growth in this country for the plan period, to the five cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway?

Dublin growth is uncontrolled and the biggest regional development driver is proximity to the capital. Towns like Carlow and Drogheda are expanding dramatically as punters are pushed out of the capital by high prices to find housing in commuter belt towns. Anyone who has travelled from Waterford to Dublin by train will have seen that for themselves. 

Carlow is now bigger than Kilkenny. 

Similarly, the motorway network originally built to spread development to the regions is facilitating the spread of Dublin out along the highways. We see it as we travel the M9 to Dublin from Waterford. As soon as you hit the M9/M7 junction you feel that you are in Dublin. Development is everywhere. 

If nothing is done and massive growth of Dublin continues unhindered, population growth will upend the South East region. 

The impact on investment demand in Waterford could be very negative.

Frank McDonald described this problem in the Irish Times in July 2023 under the heading “Dublin’s runaway growth is a disaster for the whole country.” 

The NPF suggests that Dublin’s population will increase by 265,000 over the plan period, while the other four cities would only increase by a combined 240,000. Waterford city is expected to grow by 30,000 people before 2040. What is the investment that will drive that growth? 

McDonald has one sentence in his article, which should be a national call to arms. “The continued expansion of Dublin, fueled by the over concentration of economic activity around the capital and the laissez faire approach to national spatial planning, will severely inhibit the development prospects of the four smaller cities, thereby preventing them from acquiring critical mass to become economic engines of their regions.” 

Readers of this column know that the question “why does Waterford find it so hard to attract government capital investment” is asked frequently. Well, why does it? How can €1 billion be found for a new TU Dublin campus in Grangegorman, in a city with five other universities, TCD, UCD, DCU, Maynooth and RCSI, while nothing, zero, nichts, nada, null or whatever you’re having yourself, is spent on new teaching buildings in WIT/SETU Waterford? How is this fair? 

How can Fine Gael, in power for the last 14 years, justify this? How can anyone justify this? 

Poring over the files, one finds WIT president, Prof Willie Donnelly in June 2018 welcoming “the announcement today of a new 12,800m2 Engineering, Computing and General Teaching building on the Institute’s Cork Road Campus, which will provide students access to state-of-the-art infrastructure and a modern student environment. The new building will include workshops, laboratories, classrooms, lecture theatres, research space, tutorial rooms, training rooms and administration offices.” 

Planning permission was received in 2019, but nothing has been built. The engineering building site is weed overgrown and our college has been forced to reapply for planning permission for the development to keep it live. 

After five years in power, Simon Harris as Taoiseach and Minister for Further Education is responsible. Excuses about Covid, about PPP, about the price of concrete or the procurement process for state-funded investment are all excuses for Fine Gael’s failure to do what they promised to do in 2018. 

They had the opportunity to build the Waterford new engineering building in 2020 and pulled it in favour of further investment in Dublin and Cork. New third-level facilities have been developed everywhere except in Waterford since then. 

Fine Gael wants to be congratulated for that failure and expects Waterford people to vote for them? Why would anyone do that? 

If our city fails to meet its NPF target, will we be told it’s our fault, that we lack dynamism or some such muck, when the reality is that we lack necessary state investment!

Minister for Further and Higher Education, Patrick O’Donovan announced major capital and funding packages for tertiary education on October 1. “As part of Budget 2025, Government has agreed total National Training Fund (NTF) funding of €1.485bn over a six-year period (2025-2030) for the tertiary sector to include €650m core funding for Higher Education, €600m capital uplift including €150m to provide key training facilities in veterinary, medicine, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry and €150 million for the research sector.” 

We have had the announcement of the veterinary medicine school in Piltown but with no indication of when new buildings or physical investment, if any, will be made. Will we be waiting in 2030, in the last months of the next government for an announcement of a new veterinary medicine facility just as we have waited since 2009 for a new engineering building? Has Fine Gael any shame? 

Last January Taoiseach Varadkar told Matt Shanahan: “What we don’t disagree on is that Waterford needs more investment.” 

In July last Taoiseach Harris promised to “get the job done for Waterford”. Waterford is still waiting for the money.

Frank McDonald finished his 2023 opinion column by suggesting a re-focus of the National Planning Framework backed by serious investment for places like Waterford (presumably in SETU, UHW, FDI, airport etc). “If that doesn’t happen, Ireland is in grave danger of replicating the gross (regional) inequalities evident in Britain.”