Phoenix: 'Dear Taoiseach Harris, Waterford has been wounded by you'

By the time this appears in print you will probably be Taoiseach. Being the youngest Taoiseach ever elected in Ireland is quite something and it will more than make up for those endless nights of rubber chicken dinners and mind bending party committee meetings. You certainly deserve credit for achieving your goal. The climb to the top is littered with the (metaphorical) bodies of those who fell by the wayside. Congratulations are in order.

From a Waterford point of view, the first thing that most people heard was that you consulted deeply with Phil Hogan before making your challenge for the position as Taoiseach. To say that Mr. Hogan is disliked in Waterford is an understatement. As he is deep in your counsels, it appears to us that a vote for you is by association, a vote for Phil Hogan. 

Not many people in Waterford will buy that bill of goods. Once bitten, twice shy and all that. When Hogan and James Reilly supported Enda Kenny for Taoiseach in 2011, both were subsequently appointed to cabinet. 

Almost immediately there were negative movements against WIT and UHW and the budgets for both were savaged. There was an attempt at service reduction in UHW to bring it into line with the county hospitals in Wexford, Clonmel and Kilkenny. WIT, on the cusp of university status, was devastated, its leadership destroyed and capital investment in new business and engineering buildings cancelled. 

Fine Gael came into the 2011 election, and two subsequent elections, promising a university for Waterford, but we recall the bitter words that emanated from Kilkenny that “there will be a university in the south east but the name Waterford won’t be over the door!” That miserable forecast has come true. The SETU merger of WIT with IT Carlow has thus far been disastrous. Promised funding and new buildings have not arrived in Waterford. The sole positive has been the €4m purchase of the brownfield glass factory site, hardly convincing in the context of the investment required.

Since 2011 the traditional universities have greatly expanded new courses, facilities and student accommodation. This has put enormous pressure on the newly formed TU sector with a 4% reduction in student numbers while the existing universities increased numbers by 9%. No investment has been made in new teaching buildings in Waterford since 2006. How can Waterford compete in this environment?

Last week, Damien Tiernan replayed your Feb 2022 WLR interview, made in advance of the SETU creation in May, 2022. You said regarding the purchase of the glass site that “I want a decision within the year. The case for Waterford is different as they did not need to put a business case to buy the site. We need this urgently, we need it yesterday. We have made a decision in respect of Waterford to set aside capital to expand the footprint (of WIT).“ Very fine words. The purchase of 20 acres was not completed until November 2023, 20 months after your interview!

Waterford’s biggest grouse is the obscene lack of new third level buildings. We travel all over the country, including to Carlow and see masses of new third level buildings everywhere. The last one in Waterford was built on the Cork Road in 2006. You well know that a new engineering building was promised on the Cork Road in 2009, when outline planning was granted for it. Your party now attempts to persuade people that nothing could develop from an outline planning process. This is an egregious untruth. The outline permission was part of a PPP to provide the new building. 

That PPP was cancelled by the Fine Gael government in 2011. Had that not happened the chosen PPP developer would have applied for full planning permission as part of the contract. Anyway, government revived the project in 2017 and planning for a new engineering building was granted in 2019. You told Damien Tiernan in February, 2022 that “Waterford has been let down (by you as minister?) on this funding and that I expect construction to commence this year (2022) or early next year and open in 2025. I understand the skepticism of Waterford people. I am not going to hide. It is long overdue for the people of Waterford. 

They have been let down on this.” Ah sure, what’s two years between friends? Here we are in April 2024, still let down and still skeptical. No sign of the new engineering building, the 2025 target blown out the window. We hear ad nauseam from your local party faithful that the matter is “complicated and that there is only one contractor left in the PPP”. You and your Department of Further Education caused this delay. You removed the Waterford building from the first PPP construction bundle in 2020 and concentrated on Dublin and Cork, the places that least need new investment. We are sick of hearing “the new building is at the tender stage” in the last few months of the five year term of this government. (Please don’t talk about the North Quays). 

The delay in providing the new building is shameful and unequalled on any third level campus across the country. It is often said in business and politics that people kiss upwards, and kick downwards. Fawning at the people above you and trampling on those below you. Many believe that Waterford city bears the marks of your upward climb as third level capital investment was delayed to satisfy your political supporters in Carlow, Kilkenny and Wexford. WIT/SETU and Waterford has been seriously wounded by you in that context.

Unless construction on the new engineering building starts quickly, people simply won’t vote for Fine Gael in Waterford. The lackeys tell you it doesn’t resonate with the electorate like they told Leo that the UHW mortuary was not an issue. We have been codded, misled, suffered obfuscation, mendacity and appalling delay for nearly every government project here. 

Your predecessor Mr. Varadkar admitted this about funding for UHW. As incoming Taoiseach, who presided over the Department of Further Education for the past four years, you bear a special responsibility to deliver investment to SETU Waterford. P**s or get off the pot. Give us our new engineering building!