Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach and the Government for supporting the north quays project in Waterford. It is a transformative project for the whole of the south east and it might - I say "might" - just be the turning point our region has been waiting for.

As the Taoiseach is well aware, the south east is home to just under 10% of our country's population and it has fallen behind the rest of the country. Each year, we leave behind €10 billion of GDP year on year. My parish's €16 billion of GDP should be a €26 billion economy, and it might be were it to be like the other university regions of Ireland. The region and the whole country pay a massive social cost for this underperformance. We pay for it in higher unemployment, poverty and crime rates, less consumption and services, and of course the hidden cost in the loss of our young and the brain drain from the region.

In recent years, the south east has rightly detected that the Government was actively planning for the prevention of a positive future from emerging in our region. It was preventing a university of scale, the north quays project, our airport expansion, our hospital expansion and the delivery of the M24. These projects were all aimed at fulfilling the potential in our region. We have seen the transformation of other regions and wondered where our future is. I voted for the Government's finance measures and the spending of €10 billion on capital projects this year. I wish to see transparency and equity in the provision of this money. It is great to see that over the next four years, the north quays will see €25 million per year to support the project. For those who shout that I am engaging in parish pump politics, they should hold no fear because I would say there is not a snowball's chance in hell that we in the south east will see the €890 million allocation, although Waterford will see its 2.44% of that if recent history is to be any judge.

The importance of the north quays is welcome but it is not going to close the GDP gap. The measure that will close that gap is higher education and the building of a university of substance in the south east, equivalent to the capacity and scale of those in Limerick, Galway and Cork. In the programme for Government, the south east is singled out and emphasised as the region where the technological university must be built. Yet with €56 million spent on technological universities by Government so far, the south east consortium is funded behind the Cork, Dublin and Galway-led consortiums. These three regions already have thriving universities. It begs the question of what the Government's commitment is to a Waterford-led technological university that is capable of transforming the whole south east in the way the University of Limerick has transformed the mid-west in the past 30 years, for example. Is the strategy to prevent a university of scale emerging to protect the existing national universities from the competition that we in the south east might bring? In turn, such a strategy would result in holding our region back.

See this speech in context