Madam, - It was interesting to see Goodbody Stockbrokers confirm what most people in the South-East already know regarding the link between the lack of a university in Waterford and above-average unemployment and low wages in the region.
The South-East, having been formerly a prosperous region, has been impoverished by abject government neglect during the most economically favourable conditions in Ireland in 200 years. The Government insists on creating millionaires in Galway but it refuses to spend a penny in Waterford.
It has been true for a while now that the South-East is poorer than the BMW region. But when will the Government start to bring high-value jobs to Waterford? Waterford has been surviving on the scraps of manufacturing and call-centre jobs for years. When will Waterford receive foreign direct investment in the bio-sciences or engineering? When will Waterford, and the state's third most populous region, get a university? When will professionals from Waterford be able to find work in their native city?
As the manufacturing sector in Ireland stands on the brink of collapse, it is imperative that a campus of the National University of Ireland be created from Waterford Institute of Technology, which is already operating far beyond its remit, in terms of postgraduate degrees and research. It is already a larger institution, in terms of student numbers, than NUI Maynooth.
The Government's inertia with regard to Waterford city and the South-East region is shameful. The city that has been an industrial and commercial powerhouse in Ireland since time immemorial is facing a terminal decline in the absence of real political will to support the economy of Waterford and the region as a whole. - Yours, etc,
MARK McLAUGHLIN, IFSC, Mayor Street, Dublin 1.