When Dick meets Mick .......the future of WIT

 

 

In the coming weeks, the new chair of WIT Dick Langford will meet with Mike Kelly, the Minister for Education’s special nominee to get the Waterford IT and IT Carlow merger back on track. Langford replaces Donnie Ormonde. Ormonde may or may not have been asked by the Minister to resign, after Waterford IT suspended merger talks when it became clear that the merger would not bring about a university of the south east.

The Board of Waterford IT recently affirmed that the ITCarlow merger remains suspended, and even though the Board is concerned about Kelly’s limited terms of reference, after a heated discussion they have agreed to meet with Kelly.

 

So what should the newly appointed Langford say?

Waterford wants to stop the city and region's steady decline. The gap between Waterford and the three other regional cities in Ireland continues to widen. A new university is required to halt that decline. Waterford IT and the regional stakeholders made that case in 2005 when applying for a 'section 9' review that could have seen WIT become a university; and that request has been ignored by the Government, the Department of Education and the Higher Education Authority.  

It is clear that a technological university, as currently proposed will not halt the decline of the South-East region and Waterford City. The proposed TU will not be funded like a university, and it will not be recognised  by the other universities as an equal. As a result it will be a pretend university. The city and region will not be bought off by this pretence.

 

 

Dick Langford, as a native Waterfordian, who grew up and was educated in Waterford and led the education services in the city, knows this better than anyone. He now has a decision to make. Will he fight for what he knows is right or will he try to sell the pretend process, with a pretend objective. His meeting with Kelly has the potential to bring clarity to a wider audience of the sell-out that has been attempted.  

FG WIT University pledge: "Isn't that what you tend to do during an election?"

Today it is important to remember the promises made by both government parties to voters in the South East. This blog has previosuly detailed some of the Labour promise to create a university and above is a 2008 pledge made by FG.


Pat Rabbitte "Isn't that what you tend to do during an election?"

Good riddence Mr Gilmore.

The resignation of Eamon Gilmore shows that failing to deliver on political promises has consequences. The heave against Gilmore was led by politicians from the South East- notably former MEP Phil Prendergast and Ciara Conway TD. Eamon Gilmore garnered votes across the South East by leading on the university issue, but then took no action whilst in office. Perhaps with Gilmore gone, Labour will now focus on delivering what they promised. Labour TDs Ann Phelan, Alan Kelly, Ciara Conway and Brendan Howlin have limited time left to progress the South East's university aspirations before they follow their colleagues out the door. The people of the South East have high hopes that Gilmore's successor delivers what was promised to the region. Farewell Mr. Gilmore.

What is a University Hospital without a University? It's another nail in the South East’s university coffin.

 

The Government showed its real intentions last week when they gifted Waterford Regional Hospital to UCC. This swift and dramatic action shows the government is capable of radical reorganisation of institutions in short time frames. It also shows that these changes are not favourable to the people and institutions from the South East.

 

This is action, in contrast to the Government’s“commitment” to examine placing a university in the South East in the programme for Government, Labour and Fine Gael’s detailed promises at the last election, all the technical reports (Hunt, Port, Goodbody, HEA landscapes,  etc...) and the thirty years of campaigning. The UCC takeover of WRH is action, and it is action that shows the Fine Gael/Labour government reneging on its commitments. This new arrangement breaks WRH’s longstanding links to RCSI and WIT; weakening WIT as a research level institution. 

 

It is interesting how UCC captured the South East’s regional hospital. Minister O’Reilly commissioned UCC’s Professor Higgins to undertake an Independent study of Ireland’s hospital groups and his only conclusion of significance was that the South East group be broken up with WRH going to his school at UCC. All this happened despite 15,000 people from the South East marching through Waterford in late 2012. The report was implemented in less than a year. It is very clear that the political vacuüm in the South East continues to have devastating implications.

Ruairí Quinn confirms he will never make a university in the South East

Last month Ruairí Quinn visited WIT to let the people of the south-east know that the Technological University will not happen before 2018. In political speak, this means it will never happen as long as Quinn is minister- by 2018 Quinn will be long gone from education and by then it will be someone else's job to string us along. If this was not bad enough, he piled on an insult to the 48,000 WIT alumni by suggesting that WIT is below university standard saying "You cannot celebrate your 21st birthday until you are 21 and, for ITs, you have got to reach the standard."

Well the Minister has forgotten whilst in opposition, when he affirmed that Waterford was ready for university status and berated the then Government for their delay in dealing with WIT’s university application. Quinn is no expert, but Dr. Jim Port is. He was the OECD expert that the Department of Education engaged to respond to WIT’s section 9 application (the formal request to become a university). Inconveniently for the Department, Port could hardly have been clearer in saying that Waterford Institute of Technology has "an academic maturity and an activity profile" similar to universities in Ireland and other Western countries. He further determined that the Institute "fulfils many of the broader roles of a university, especially in terms of support to regional, economic and cultural development and knowledge transfer".

WIT is forty-five years old; it has provided degree education for over 29 years and PhDs for more than 20 years. WIT has proved that it can create a university experience on IoT resources and has clearly asked for fair access to university level resources. University level resources, at WIT's current scale would mean an increase of around 25%-50%; this is based on a comparison with the smaller universities in the state. In fact WIT is bigger than every Irish university was in 1990 save for UCD, and is twice the size of UL and DCU when they were made universities in 1989. Beyond scale, WIT also has demonstrated university type quality- WIT is very successful at winning large research grants in competitive national and EU competitions, and its academics have demonstrated that they can publish in top journals.

Ruairí Quinn, like Batt O’Keeffe before him is clearly stalling using inaction, process and mistruths to make sure that the South East does not get a university (or anything close) on his watch. Déjà vu. Hopefully like Batt before him, he will be dispatched along with his party colleagues in the region, Ann Phelan, Alan Kelly, Ciara Conway and Brendan Howlin, at the next election.

Why this blog is back......

 
Three years into their term, it is clear that this government will disappoint the people of the South East by not creating a university here. It is hard to figure out exactly what the proposed Technological University will be- but at this point two things are clear. The TU of the South East is not going to get university level funding and it will not be part of the community of other universities in Ireland.

The technological university process is very convoluted and is designed to look like stuff is happening. When in opposition Enda Kenny, Eamonn Gillmore and Ruari Quinn all visited WIT and all made specific statements promising a university. There are twelve government TDs* across the region and two senior government ministers. In 1997 the same two parties tried to start the process of making WIT a university before it came to a halt once the rainbow government lost out to FF. So most people are presuming that all these people are working diligently to make it happen. With two years left there is still time to do something, but it is increasingly clear that the forces against creating a proper university are winning out and hence the need for this blog/group to come out of retirement.
 
 
* Pat Deering Fine Gael Carlow-Kilkenny, Phil Hogan Fine Gael Carlow-Kilkenny, Ann Phelan Labour Carlow-Kilkenny, John Paul Phelan Fine Gael Carlow-Kilkenny, Tom Hayes Fine Gael Tipperary South, Paudie Coffey Fine Gael Waterford, Ciara Conway Labour Waterford, John Deasy Fine Gael Waterford, Brendan Howlin Labour Wexford, Paul Kehoe Fine Gael Wexford, Liam Twomey Fine Gael Wexford,