Phoenix: The white flag is up!

In racing parlance, the horses are under starter's orders and the off is just about upon us. Friday 29th will tell us what’s in store for the next five years. The polls suggest Fianna Fáil plus Fine Gael coupled with some sort of small party mudguard or group of reliable independents is inevitable. Sinn Fein is down from the poll heights of a year ago and has never recovered its mojo, although its performance in this constituency in the local elections was in stark contrast to the results achieved elsewhere. Whether that transfers to a general election remains to be seen. Could they surprise us again?

The government parties are running on a “sensible, you can trust us” message, while promising, should they be re-elected, an unprecedented level of investment in everything you can imagine. In many ways the run-up to the election has been a dismal bidding war. 

The national media commentary has also been critical of this “when we haves it we spends it” attitude, particularly in light of emerging security threats in Europe and wider economic worries about what the Trump administration is likely to do in 2024. 

Many people may hold their noses and plump for the security blanket of the “devil you know” etc. The election analysis by Michael McDowell is very interesting and worth a read in the Irish Times of November 20th last, if you can lay your hands upon it. He believes neither Fianna Fáil nor Fine Gael can “reasonably aspire to govern without each other and neither party will enter a coalition with Sinn Féin.” 

In a comment that is particularly true for Waterford, he writes “the unashamed auction politics coming from all parties rings hollow. It all lacks credibility. Why didn’t the bigger parties deliver half of their newly devised promises when they had the chance to do so?” 

For us that means last week, last month, last year? Why indeed?

Our “asks” in the past five years were relatively modest, 24/7 cardiology, airport runway and engineering building at SETU. None of those three headline local policies have been delivered. That’s a stark condemnation of any government, which reinforces the long-felt sense of grievance that Waterford as a regional city is traditionally an outlier in government capital spending. 

Some suggest that sense of “otherness” is derived from the War of Independence and the local love affair with Unionist/ Redmondism. Waterford continued to elect a member of the Redmond family to the Dáil up to 1952. One deceased Fianna Fáil mayor of Waterford once told me that de Valera had predicted he would “live to see the grass grow on the Quays in Waterford” following his treatment in the city in the 1918 election campaign. Such stuff may be apocryphal, but there is a long-lasting, persistent and deeply embedded sense among locals that we do not get a fair crack of the government investment whip. 

Others suggest that our problems are far more prosaic, being a willingness to vote for mediocre representation. Evidence of political power is the investment that flowed this way during the ministerial tenure of Martin Cullen. The ignoranti will tell you that most of what came our way was ”coming anyway” but anyone examining the past 15 years of coalition government, when Waterford power was noticeably absent, finds a different answer. Things were ”coming” but never arrived. 

Things will “come next time out” if you return us to power! 24/7 cardiology is coming, but regardless of how it’s dressed-up in terms of recruitment and backfilling of posts, it is not here. This represents an unwillingness to deliver acute medical equity to this city and region. 

Blame the HSE, the Dept. of Health, the politics of the situation, but the result is still the same. There is no commitment to it in the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael or Sinn Féin manifestos. Likewise with the proposed new engineering block for SETU Waterford, which is on the stocks since 2008. It has been effectively cancelled by government for the second time in two decades. There is no commitment to it in any of the three big party manifestos. And, the airport runway debacle is an ongoing terrible indictment of equitable government.

The Fine Gael 2024 manifesto rightly references Waterford city in terms of the need for balanced regional development. That’s great news, again, but when investment did not come in the past five years will it come in the next five years? Senator John Cummins suggests that the lack of a Fine Gael TD is at play across the board. Eg, failure to build the SETU engineering building is shocking, but remember, it was not built when Waterford had two Fine Gael TDs. 

Sinn Féin’s voice in opposition has been Waterford-light. This has disappointed many who gave David Cullinane 20,000 first preferences last time out. Is the election of two Sinn Féin TDs likely to improve matters very much in that context given the opaque nature of that party’s national decision making? 

Is a campaign based on electing a TD for a particular geographic area of the constituency difficult to sustain? Is that really what the people of West Waterford want?

The Green Party disappointed Waterford in power. Our voice was hardly heard about the airport runway and the failure to fund it has been very difficult to sell. Locals see the “ask” as tiny in terms of the national finances. Conventional wisdom suggests the Greens' Marc Ó Cathasaigh will not be in the next Dáil, unless of course a Tramore vote solidifies around him. Independent Matt Shanahan was the standout Waterford presence in the last Dáil. Never was the word Waterford heard so often or Waterford issues so deeply probed at leader’s question time. Even Fianna Fáil Minister Mary Butler acknowledged on WLR FM that Mr Shanahan has done sterling work for UHW. He was the only South East Oireachtas member to resist the unfunded creation of SETU. The lack of capital investment on the Cork Road over nearly two decades, when compared to every other third-level campus in the country, reinforces that position and underlines Waterford’s perennial problem in securing a fair share of state investment.

Anyway, the final decision on who will represent us for the next five years is down to you, the voters of Waterford.