Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State will know - the Government certainly knows - that Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, which was the fulcrum of the new SETU, had been providing teacher training in the form of further education, which was recognised by the Teaching Council. The academics in WIT had long recognised the regional need for teacher education, particularly at secondary level, in the south east. They conducted a review of this need across the region and have the data to support the argument.

It was a fundamental understanding of the development of TUs that they would have a regional remit and that the provision of teacher education would be a part of that. Sadly, the latest departmental report underscores where influence resides and policy is written, notwithstanding the Minister of State's final comments. The idea that the ambitions of aspiring teacher students can only be realised in one of the national universities is risible and perverse, especially given the research and academic achievements of the Waterford campus of SETU over the past decade. It gives me no pleasure to say it, but it appears to be business as usual in terms of denigrating the ambitions of the south east, particularly of Waterford academics and education. I am not sure that many families in Waterford or the wider south east will thank the Government for the resumption of this discriminatory behaviour. We were promised a game-changing university but, despite what the Minister of State said, I do not see anything to counter my belief. No thanks will be forthcoming for the removal of opportunity from our region, and certainly none for those who cheered a new dawn of academic and faculty advancement in the south east, because it is not being seen. People have been cheering a new dawn. Unfortunately, this latest policy is a setting sun on the ambitions of teacher training in Waterford and the wider south east.

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