Garbhan Downey: The north-west region needs friends in the south to thrive

NUI Senate candidate, Garbhan Downey, suggests a new university in Derry must underpin the badly needed revitalisation of the border regions.

Stormont, in its present form, isn’t working for Derry and the wider north-west region.

Many of my parents’ generation, who took part in the cavalcade to Belfast for a new university for Derry city in the 1960s, would argue that it has never worked for Derry and its environs.

As indeed would many of my grandparents’ generation, who witnessed the impact of partition, followed by a systematic running down of the infrastructure west of the Bann.

Derry views itself as a historic city, a cultural city, and the regional capital of northwest Ireland.

On its best day, however, Stormont still sees Derry as a commuter town for Belfast. And on its worst days (and there have been many) Stormont views the island’s fourth-largest city as a disloyal liability.

Both sides of the border in the North West are still wearing the scars of age-old discrimination.

Just this month, the economist John Fitzgerald wrote in the Irish Times: “Donegal’s economy is tied up with the fortunes of Derry, its nearest major city. Decades of underinvestment in Derry, particularly in higher education and transport infrastructure, have affected its prosperity, with spillover effects in Donegal.”

Pre-civil rights Stormont kept all investment and development for Belfast and the east coast to service unionism.

Under the new-model Stormont, it is refreshing to note that the element of sectarianism has mostly gone. But the Greater Belfast Lobby, now comprising both the Orange and Green business sector (and other), is still as self-interested, all-consuming and oblivious as ever.

Indeed, it is very telling that liberal unionists have begun publicly warning Stormont not to make the same mistakes it did with Derry 60 years ago.

Not surprisingly, the recent three-year suspension of the Stormont administration had considerably less impact in Derry than it did in Belfast.

Regional development in the North West has been so poor that Derry and Strabane councillors have renamed Invest NI, the state development agency, ‘Invest Belfast’.

Picture courtesy of Hive studios

The Irish government, however, has been a good friend to the North West in these times of stasis, and did sterling work to have a major Derry development package written into the Stormont get-back-to-work-programme, New Decade, New Deal.

The long-awaited medical school for Derry, first promised by Ulster University in 2003, was given the green light. This was coupled with a guarantee to have 10,000 full-time higher students at Magee by the end of the decade – an assurance first given to the city by UU more than 20 years ago.

The Derry/Strabane Council area, population 150,000, currently has just 3,300 full-time students at its sole third-level education provider, Magee; Cork has 40,000 across several providers, and its numbers are rising.

In December, despite some understandable trepidation Conal McFeely, who co-founded the Derry University Group with Diane Greer and myself in 2013, issued a statement on our behalf, welcoming New Decade, New Deal’s commitments to Derry.

Just a few weeks later, however, we learned almost by accident that agreements we thought were fixed in stone were being hollowed out.

It started with news of a £126m loan for Ulster University to finish work on a new, grossly over-budget Belfast campus, which, by all rights, should have been built in Derry.

Almost simultaneously, it was announced that the plans to expand Derry’s university provision to 10,000 full-time, students – as promised in the Programme for Government - were being shelved. No money.

Then this week we learned that the Derry medical school has also been stalled again, for want of yet another business case.

You remember that Schulz cartoon of Lucy pulling the ball away just as Charlie Brown was about to kick it? For a while our group was seriously considering using it as a masthead.

A petition was launched urging Stormont to refuse to bail out Belfast until binding guarantees were given to develop Derry.

It has been signed by thousands of people and sparked a fierce debate at Derry/Strabane council over whether or not the region should strike its annual rate because of the broken promises about the university.

In turn, the Greater Belfast Lobby began warning about Derry ‘whinging’ – which traditionally has been code for ‘shut your mouths or you’ll get nothing’.

That fact is that if the proper structures are in place, and the proper courses are on offer, there are few regions in these islands that would be as attractive to a student as northwest Ireland.

An independent cross-border university – managed by the region itself - will be the cornerstone of the North West’s recovery. It will stimulate economic development, and it will deliver equality.

A new institution, between Derry and Letterkenny, under the auspices of the NUI, will also ensure that citizens from the North can retain the same rights to education and vocational training as students in other EU states.

And it will provide the lead in developing all-island education policy on: the curriculum, academic standards, vocational skills, fees and accessibility, student housing costs and safety/welfare.

To do this will require significant support from the Dublin government – which previous administrations have assured us they are ready to give.

And it will require full Dublin oversight – via the North South Ministerial Council – to ensure that Stormont lives up to its considerable responsibilities to the world outside Greater Belfast.

If our fellow regional capitals along the Atlantic Coast - Cork, Limerick and Galway - can make a success of their third-level institutions, so can we.

The North West is an area ready for greatness and ready to thrive. But to do this, it needs its friends in South.

Derry publisher Garbhan Downey is a candidate for Seanad Éireann (NUI Constituency).