Ministers in row over plans to upgrade IT

GOVERNMENT ministers are at odds over the future of Waterford Institute of Technology with one proposing it be upgraded to a university, the other shunning the idea and the Taoiseach taking a ‘wait and see’ approach.

Education and Science Minister Mary Hanafin said on a visit to Waterford that she believes WIT is “fine as it is.”

However, Transport Minister Martin Cullen has said it not only deserves to become a university, “it has earned it.”

Bertie Ahern was full of praise for WIT recently, acknowledging that “extraordinary advances have been made in a short space of time.”

Although the Taoiseach stopped short of advocating a change of status, he equated it with Dublin City University, saying: “DCU opened in the second half of the 70s and went through the whole NIHE status before being made a university just a few years ago. Waterford has been making far greater speed and that’s a credit to its work and the people involved; its staff and board.”

Mr Ahern added: “Minister Cullen has been at Cabinet level long articulating where it has to go and that process is underway.”

Although Ms Hanafin described WIT as “one of the best in the country,” she told local radio station WLR FM: “It has a tremendous standard and caters for a wide range of people. I don’t see why it has to be a university when it is already expert at the work it is doing.”

And despite a Goodbody report commissioned by Waterford Chamber of Commerce which says a university would be a key economic driver for the region, the minister felt it would make no impact, were the IT upgraded.

“I have looked at other places in the world, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the London School of Economics, which attract huge investment into their areas. Neither of them are a university. What is important is the quality and you certainly have that at the Waterford Institute of Technology.”

Mr Cullen, meanwhile, says he wholeheartedly supports the move by just about everyone in the South-East to have WIT’s status upgraded to that of a university.

“It is my view that Waterford Institute of Technology is not just deserving of becoming a university. Far more important is that it has earned it. It has arrived at that point to make that transition.”

Waterford Institute of Technology has consistently maintained it should be upgraded to a university.

The recent Goodbody report suggested more than 2,000 extra jobs would be generated in Waterford and up to €100 million extra generated in the local economy, were a university established in the region.