Phoenix: What do we know?

The announcement last week of a new veterinary school for SETU at Kildalton, Piltown, coupled with the construction start on a new UHW surgical hub in Maypark Lane, made people sit up. 

It’s as if we had been at some great dinner party over the past five years with this government, where the main courses were continually served up to guests all around us while we waited, hungry, at the bottom table. 

Suddenly, with an election looming, two announcements burst on the scene, like dessert after the main meal, tasty but really not nutritious. 

Context is everything of course. The veterinary medicine course is very prestigious and sends a clear signal to the middle classes that SETU means business. With an enrolment of 40 students annually on a five-year course it makes a tiny dent in the brain drain from the South East to other regions of the country. 

Remember, 13,000 students leave this region every year for university and rarely return when qualified. The economic cost to the region is enormous.

It is unclear what physical infrastructure will be needed or built to support the new vet course or indeed when anything might be built. 

Practical work will probably be in Kildalton, with academic work in Waterford. 

However, huge congratulations are due to Prof Veronica Campbell and her team at SETU for obtaining this course. It clearly sets out SETU’s ambition. 

Remember these announcements are in the closing months/ weeks of this government. SETU has a strategic development ask of €350 million. The vet course at approximately €20 million is a small dent in that sum. 

Course development has to include teaching and pharmacy. A medical school with UHW simply has to be on the cards.

In the past five years, SETU has missed the main courses, the heavyweight investment in physical infrastructure, new buildings and new student accommodation that have gone to colleges in other cities. 

We know that in 2008 a PPP to provide new WIT engineering and business schools was ready, that this was cancelled by Enda Kenny’s government in 2011, that Enda Kenny promised a full university to Waterford before the 2011 election, following the disastrous closure of Waterford Glass and Talk Talk, knowing the competitive difficulties this city faced. 

He used the word “pledge” if remembered correctly. Two Fine Gael TDs were elected on that pledge in 2011, but nothing happened. 

We know the engineering building project was revived in 2017, that planning was granted in 2019, that the work has been tendered. 

We know it could have gone to construction in 2020, as college buildings in Cork, Dublin and elsewhere did, but was stalled. 

We know that new courses were arriving every few years in WIT up to 2006. 

We know that stopped and course numbers were capped. 

We know that planning permission for the new engineering building will lapse this December and must be reapplied for because no work has been carried out on site to justify an extension to the existing planning. 

We know that the last thing built on the WIT Cork Road site was the Humanities Building, which started in 1998, was suspended in 2001, and finished in 2006; that nothing has been built there since. 

We know that this did not happen in any other city in the country, that €645,924,766.23 was spent on building 100 higher education projects from 2016 to 2023, that Carlow IT has built five new buildings in that time with the assistance of the HEA, that the tooth fairy arrived and that Carlow did all this from their own resources. 

Even now, a new corporate services building has just been completed in SETU Carlow. 

We know that Fine Gael has not laid a brick on the Cork Road WIT site in almost 14 years, that this has hurt WIT/ SETU. 

We know that the Department of Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe has the engineering building file on his desk for 12 months. 

We know that a disgraceful amount of time was spent dithering over the Waterford Glass site purchase for approximately €4 million. 

We know that WIT was prevented from buying it much earlier, much cheaper. Talk about due diligence and procurement policies was blather. 

We know that GMIT in Galway bought 10 acres for €9 million from Galwegians RFC “in case” they might need it in a city with an existing huge university. We know they leased it back immediately to the rugby club.

The new elective surgical hub at UHW is a very welcome, heavyweight piece of new infrastructure, which cheered up UHW staff no end, albeit in the closing weeks/ months of this government. 

We know that UHW as a Model 4 hospital, with the lowest staff, lowest budget and lowest capital expenditure of the nine such Model 4s, that it has not had a fair share of capital spending, that in 2023 its acute capital allocation was zero. 

We know that projects, which were being priced with existing contractors on site and ready to go in February 2022, did not proceed. We know that the pathology lab extension was shovel ready at the time but was delayed until last month. 

We know that a proper new OPD on top of the main hospital was pulled in 2022. 

We also know that UHW has some of the best outcomes, some of the best clinicians and staff and that their performance has not been rewarded with capital investment. 

We know that UHW has modular pre-fabs as temporary OPD units. We know that UHW had a tent outside its ED for nine months of 2023 without complaint from the Health minister. 

We know that there has been an uptick in staff and budget at UHW, comparable to that in every hospital in the land. 

We know that the Tánaiste Micheál Martin and Minister Mary Butler of Fianna Fáil stood outside UHW in 2020 and promised 24/7 cardiology there and that it has not been delivered. The list is long.

We know our airport has been almost done to death by the Green Party over a matter of pennies. 

Most of all we know that these things are about the future of Waterford city rather than the ambitions of any single politician. More next week.