3 Year Wait too Long! Designate WIT now.

The Government must grant University designation to Waterford Institute of Technology without further delay.

It is almost 3 years since WIT made application to the Government for University designation in February 2005 and almost a year since the long awaited and much abused report by Dr Jim Port which was commissioned by the Government, was finally published. It surely makes a mockery of the Governments own legislation if they continue to refuse to allow WITs’ case be adjudicated on by an International Panel as set out in the Universities Act 1997 (Section 9).

We run the risk at this stage, of our hard-worked and comprehensive application being totally out-dated by the Governments lack of action of this most important issue.

Waterford has been devastated by job loss announcements over the past years and months in particular and if the Governments’ own National Spatial Strategy is to mean anything then the South East Region, which alone suffers by having no University, must be given the tools to stimulate and deliver real regional growth.

Dr Jim Port stated in his report that WIT is already ‘operating at University level’ and deserves to have its case examined. The Government has the legislation but we have had three years of delay and prevarication. Perhaps we can expect an announcement in advance of the Local Elections when surely Fianna Fáil will want to give something to try to reverse their terrible showing in the 2004 Local Elections???

Personally, I don’t care what the reason but we need University designation and we need it now.