Education

We hear the boast that Waterford now has a University. We now have the word University emblazoned on the front of our hospital and our college. In University Hospital Waterfords' case that happens to be UCC but what's 122 odd kilometres between friends? In the case of the South East Technological University (SETU) has it been a fair exchange? The name of Waterford has been erased from the third level landscape but aren't we a University city now. Well looking at the facts, no we aren't. Has the level of funding for SETU matched that of a University? Are the terms and conditions those of a University? Has there been any new teaching or learning facilities? What about even progressing those that were planned and pulled like the Engineering Building or the (now forgotten) Business Building? Yes there was, eventually, 10 million, dragged out of government to purchase the rear of the old Waterford Crystal site for an 'Enterprise' campus. Ignoring completely that there already is an enterprise campus in Carriganore which is not only thriving but still has extensive expansion capacity. What is badly needed is the development of courses to keep the 64% of students who leave the South East for their education here. Those students represent the future for the South East, they represent 15 to 20 thousand euros each taken out of our economy and spent somewhere else. Why can you not become a teacher or a doctor in our 'UNIVERSITY'?

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail between them have together undermined the status of Waterford. They have starved us of resources in third level education which has held back and stymied the once best Institute of Technology in the country. They have taken the name Waterford from over our college door. They have denied us investment and growth and pretty much, even a say in the future of our own college. They have done all this following on from the legitimate aspiration of Waterford people and WIT to be a University; the aspiration to deliver equality of opportunity for our future; the aspiration to be treated as a peer with other Irish cities. They have cannibalised our college and, in an ultimate insult, thrown the word University into the mix so that their representatives can deceitfully claim to have delivered university status to our city. The people of Waterford are not fooled. We see. We know.

In government or in the Dail I will fight tooth and nail to redress the imbalance in third level funding. To deliver equality of opportunity - via equality of investment - for Waterford and our young people. Our youth deserve nothing less.