Promises, promises
Dublin has investment one would expect but Waterford has been left behind
A few days in Dublin recently provided the opportunity to wander around that city. The level of new development is quite extraordinary, even allowing for the many office blocks which appear to be empty or carry “To Let “signage. It is our capital city after all and such investment is expected given the resilience of the Irish economy.
But, it felt like I was in a different country. A trip to the new National Children’s Hospital was a pilgrimage to see monstrous excess made flesh. A journey to Belfield to UCD and to Finglas to see DCU was an exercise in self-mortification. The trip to Maynooth was a voyage to see the might have been.
WIT was twice as big as Maynooth in 1998 when that seminary was turned into a new university over the course of a weekend by FF’s Charlie McCreevy (“when I has it, I spends it!”) and his pals. Now it is a landscape of glass and stainless steel on a huge campus with twice as many students as WIT/SETU.
There are many Waterford students at Maynooth, just as there are at UCC and UL.
What do the parents of those Waterford children think when they arrive at those campuses to see what a university coupled with real investment looks like?
Do they think to themselves, this is something that Waterford is not entitled to? A journey to Elm Park to see St Vincent’s Hospital is an expedition to a different word of health expenditure. Millions piled upon millions, upon millions while UHW scratches for crumbs to develop the Model 4 hospital that this region needs. Does the HSE have a plan for Model 4 hospitals? Are we included?
During the nine months in 2023 when the UHW Emergency Department was “graced” with a tent posing as a triage centre, it was referred to as MASH by UHW staff.
Minister Mary Butler, a Waterford TD at the Dept. of Health allowed this to exist until FF head office heard it was called the “FF Tent” and had it replaced. Why did she accept refugee standard provision for her own constituency?
Have we lost the capacity to wonder why things are the way they are, or accepted that places like Galway can have a different scale of investment in acute healthcare and third level education, which determine future urban prosperity, than us?
How can Waterford FG rationalize the failure to deliver to Waterford other than the €4m purchase of the brownfield Glass site?
Maybe our young men dream dreams and believe they have the key to the future, while those of us who have seen the past know that political party promises tend to suck! Just ask former Labour party leader Pat Rabbitte “Isn’t that what you do during an election?” Of course he recanted subsequently (don’t they all?) by saying he was taken out of context.
How have long term promises by Fine Gael, carried through three electoral cycles since 2008, ended up with the name Waterford excised from the lexicon of third level education and WIT now an anonymous part of an unfunded journey into the future.
Here we are, a couple of weeks away from the 15th anniversary of a new engineering building at WIT/SETU, promised in Aug 2009, while a €2.9m site prepared for it, is covered in weeds. Simon Harris as Minister for Health gave the go ahead for a second cath lab in Sept 2018. It arrived five years later.
He gave Waterford nothing in health. He gave Waterford nothing in third level education. Does anyone think that he will have an epiphany as Taoiseach and give us something now?
With the weeks winding down to the Dáil recess on Friday the 11th July and the possibility of an Autumn election looming large? You may not know or care, but at least ask yourself why? Do different rules apply here?
The promise ”virus” is catching. SF’s Mary Lou McDonald succumbed to the disease on her recent pre-election tour. When asked would Sinn Fein (if elected) provide 24/7 cardiology at UHW, her answer was of course yes, but without any when.
It’s a wonder she did not say, subject “to a review” or to the “outcome of the Nolan Report on Cardiology”. People in Waterford are so jaundiced with this carry on that they believe no one.
Once bitten, or in our case, twenty times bitten etc. Maybe Sinn Fein would be different in power, but what evidence has there been of that? Bland statements about the performance of our new “university” and about “balanced regional development” are the stuff of election campaigns.
In acute healthcare, third level education FDI jobs, all the party leaders say that Waterford needs more investment, but where is it? SF TD David Cullinane can give chapter and verse on every aspect of Limerick University Hospital, but has gone mute for the past couple of years on UHW and the wider Waterford economy.
SETU is a “good thing” despite its salami-like spread, lack of investment and loss of Waterford leadership. The 20,000 first preference votes will be a difficult ask this time out.
As with all political parties in the southeast, SF follows the well-trodden path that nothing can be said which might undermine a quest for seats across the region, or give the appearance of supporting Waterford as the regional centre.
Our airport is being dragged through the mud by Eamonn Ryan. His local TD Marc O’Cathasaigh, the Green Party whip, has been so silent on Waterford issues as to prompt questions about his desire to continue as a TD.
His boss seems intent on denying us a strategic regional investment which should be seen as a subtraction from the gigantic Dublin money suction machine rather than an expansion of air transport.
Every submission is met with a request for further information or a list of queries. All delay is our fault while officials and Minister Ryan, who increasingly looks like the bully who stamps on the small guy, cause endless delay and obfuscation and bow the knee to the powerful.
I just get the feeling that all the political parties think they can ignore us. They think it’s all over! Let’s wait and see.
