Coalition rift looms over university status for Waterford

WATERFORD’s most senior Government TD John Deasy has highlighted a significant rift in the coalition over the future prospects of a university in the south east.

The Fine Gael deputy said while Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton supported the upgrade of Waterford IT to university status, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn had signalled it would only happen “over his dead body”.

Mr Deasy was assessing the prospects for the city following the shock closure of the Talk Talk call centre and said in order to improve the unemployment situation in Waterford the IT needed to be supported as a technical university.

But he told RTÉ radio there were “different noises coming from different people in the Cabinet. That is something we are going to have to deal with on Monday”.

He was speaking after Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore revealed that when he first heard of a looming announcement by Talk Talk last Wednesday, he initially thought it would be a “good news” jobs story.

However, the telecommunications company soon confirmed it was closing its call centre in Waterford within 30 days, with the loss of 575 jobs.

Mr Gilmore met with employees during a visit to the call centre on Saturday evening but had little positive to offer them, apart from telling them that the Government had “moved very quickly” following Wednesday’s shock news.

There was no advance notice of the closure given to the Government before that day, he said.

“I got a message, a phone call to my office, saying somebody wanted to pass on information to me about a jobs announcement in Waterford.

“The way it was communicated to me, it sounded to me like it was going to be a ‘good news’ jobs announcement. But by the time we got back to the caller, it was already in the public domain and it was bad news,” Mr Gilmore said.

He said the head of Talk Talk, Dido Harding, was not relenting on the short nature of the 30-day “consultation period” before the call centre closes, despite a telephone request by Mr Gilmore on Saturday.

“As of today, the 30 days stands.”

The Labour leader denied that Saturday’s meeting with workers — arranged the previous day — was an attempt to upstage Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton’s already-publicised visit to Waterford today.

“We are as one on everything we do,” he said. “This is a co-ordinated government effort.”

Measures taken by the Government after news broke of the 575 job losses included starting the process of seeking an alternative use for the Waterford site; putting social welfare supports in place for workers; and “looking at how the education and training needs of the workforce” can be met.

“We have moved very quickly to put a number of things in place,” he said.

He acknowledged that Waterford and the region have been “very badly hit” by unemployment, with a “large number of very, very big job losses”.

Unemployment in the south-east is over 17%.