It was funny listening to Cian Foley of up the deise fame on the radio this morning. It was even funnier when a few kilkenny texters said that kilkenny was “as much a city as anywhere else”. If we ignore the general incorrectness of this statement we can focus on the specific incorrectness; Kilkenny is actually a large town (by Irish standards) and not a city at all. Waterford, on the other hand, was the 4th largest city in Ireland for many years but successive governments (BOTH FF & FG) ignored over 30 years of requests for a university, better roads, radiotherapy treatment facilities, sports facilities, government funded industrial parks etc. Funny thing is that all these projects were funded in Galway which overtook Waterford and Limerick in terms of population. Despite the people of Waterford putting their hard earned money to work for Galwegians for many years it seems there’s selective amnesia and no gratitude for their roads, hospitals, industry & university 🙂 To paraphrase Monty Python… “So apart from all that, what did the Waterfordians ever do for us?”
Far from being a county of “whingers” as the TV3 weatherman Martin King tried to brand us we’ve been working assiduously for the past few years to try and equalise the government sanctioned imbalance through public-private-partnerships and the creation of practical strategic development plans where our infrastructure is improved. It’s amazing how recently Dublin government discovered that Waterford was a port too and therefore needs decent infrastructure. Perhaps they use the same map as Martin King and couldn’t find us?
Here’s hoping that WIT’s university bid is successful as it is perhaps the single most important initiative for the entire county guaranteeing prestige and significant new employment. Several government-commissioned reports from educational experts have affirmed our case in the past so you’d think it would be a foregone conclusion but in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.”