Waterford University discussion

BBM77

garyscargo wrote: »

Not remotely surprised that the mention of the possible purchase of the Waterford Crystal site for TUSE was news to the owner/developer too.

Bit of a long shot I know, but the developer (Frisby IIRC?) wouldn't be up for a bit of, err, "philanthropy", would he?:) Yes, I know he's a businessman, but so were e.g. Chuck Feeney and Michael Smurfitt, who have donated to UL (hugely in Feeney's case, making an enormous contribution to Limerick city) and UCD respectively (ref. Smurfitt Graduate Business School). So, what if WIT were publicly offered the Crystal site free of charge (or for a nominal amount) on condition that it must be used for TUSE, and the TUSE HQ must remain in Waterford (covenant on the title or whatever legal safeguards would give effect to this guarantee). Made as a public offer this would put Minister Harris and the government in a politically sticky position. Refusing the offer of a huge free and patently suitable site for the new TU, especially considering what site that is and what it represents emotionally and psychologically for the City, couldn't easily be done IMO, if at all. It might be checkmate for the HQ shenanigans. The squirming would be delicious at the very least.

Yes, I know it's just fanciful whataboutery, and you might ask why the owner/developer would ever do this. Well, at the end of the day we're all just worm food or ash, but a name and legacy can live on. The Frisby Graduate School of Business, or the Noel Frisby Institute of Sustainability and the Environment (or something along those lines) might look very nice on that site for generations to come as an enduring reminder of his generosity. Or perhaps he could even instead donate a good chunk of the site to WIT/TUSE, and keep back a suitable portion for developing student accommodation, or a conference centre (or whatever) in the future. Hell, that portion might be more valuable than the entire site if the current dilapidation is replaced by modern university buildings. Not to mention the knock on effect of prosperity to the wider City, including house and land prices in general (which would obviously be of interest to him). It might therefore actually make business sense to the developer to gift (or cheaply sell) the site beyond simply being an act of philanthropy for his City. Anyone actually know the guy and brave enough to broach this idea with him? (Even for sh1ts and giggles)

Or we could just gofundme or something to buy the bloody site for TUSE (with the same HQ conditions attached). You know, whatever

Not a hope. Frisby is a dickhead, it is far from philanthropy he thinks.

imacman

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Scotland is the one to look at - population 5.5 million with 15 fully fledged universties. University of St Andrews is probably the perfect "target" is terms of scale. Albeit UStA has a 550 year head start as an institution!

Academic staff 1,137
Administrative staff 1,576
Students 8,984
Undergraduates 7,221
Postgraduates 1,763

Endowment £90.0M (as of 31 July 2019)
Budget £251.2 million (2018-19)

Re Taylor report this from 2014 -
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/education/waterford-it-chair-steps-down-following-controversial-university-status-proposal-30718097.html



and here we are 7 years on and essentially nothing has changed WIT is still a quantum ahead of Carlow and Carlow is not catching up.

Actually if you look at the targets ITCarlow set out back then for percentage research funding they haven't come near reaching them while WIT has continued to increase its funding share . Also the ITCarlow undergraduate student numbers peaked in 2017 and have been on the downward slide since while WITs have increased steadily with WIT nearly taking in double the amount of undergrads in 2020.

Carlow talk about having equilvent student numbers to WIT but that number is mostly made up of part time students and popup town hall courses they have rolled out all over the country. When in comes to undergraduate and postgraduate they are miles behind WIT

Harry Palmr

So the pressure to skew funding to Carlow is self evident, they do need the investment on their own terms but it'll just be a drag on Waterford. We'll be told we're being greedy of course and seeking to keep Carlow subordinate. Can't win.

azimuth17

imacman wrote: »

Actually if you look at the targets ITCarlow set out back then for percentage research funding they haven't come near reaching them while WIT has continued to increase its funding share . Also the ITCarlow undergraduate student numbers peaked in 2017 and have been on the downward slide since while WITs have increased steadily with WIT nearly taking in double the amount of undergrads in 2020.

Carlow talk about having equilvent student numbers to WIT but that number is mostly made up of part time students and popup town hall courses they have rolled out all over the country. When in comes to undergraduate and postgraduate they are miles behind WIT

Paper never refuses ink and the Carlow figures are not being challenged by HEA. Undergrad figures speak for themselves, WIT twice Carlow IT last year. Anyone in Carlow hinterland who wants to go to university has six of them an hour up the road. TCD, UCD, DCU, TUD, Maynooth, RCSI. Part time and pop up may be their future.

With future growth in Dublin colleges its hard to see where Carlow students will come from.

garyscargo

azimuth17 wrote: »

Paper never refuses ink and the Carlow figures are not being challenged by HEA. Undergrad figures speak for themselves, WIT twice Carlow IT last year. Anyone in Carlow hinterland who wants to go to university has six of them an hour up the road. TCD, UCD, DCU, TUD, Maynooth, RCSI. Part time and pop up may be their future.

With future growth in Dublin colleges its hard to see where Carlow students will come from.

It was infuriating to see IT Carlow's President Patricia Mulcahy use HEA 2018/19 enrolment figures in a TUSEI Staff Briefing Session to imply that IT Carlow were, effectively, every bit as large as WIT. She did this by including the 2000+ extra part-timers Carlow have enrolled on any type of programme. She then mashed in graduate numbers to effectively imply that Carlow were actually larger than WIT. See here for what I mean:
https://www.tuse.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Staff-TUSEI-Briefing-141220.pdf

Dr Mulcahy was pretty selective in her use of the HEA figures. Well, I can be selective too. Taking the same HEA 2018/19 enrolment figures again, and going for PhD/doctoral enrolments only (in all modes), IT Carlow had a total of 18 students, whereas WIT had a total of 150. She didn't want to highlight that statistic in her briefing presentation though, did she?

Looking again at the HEA data, Carlow's extra 2000+ part-time enrolments were largely undergraduate Certificate students (and I'm not talking full Higher Certs, but lesser special purpose minor awards for a few credits) (check the data yourself!). They had 1521 minor undergrad Cert students, verses 340 at WIT in this way. So there's 1200-ish accounted for immediately. And now they're claiming 11000 (??) students and staff at IT Carlow? (based on some newspaper ad shared on Twitter) Oh puhleaze!!

If this is the sort of nonsense being played out, couldn't WIT do something similar to quickly up enrolments? All WIT staff could be enrolled on a Cert in Academic Practice or similar (very common thing in the UK, so not unheard of). They could also offer a free certificate (to get enrolments up) as a "social outreach initiative", perhaps with a social responsibility or "wokey" type bent to stifle criticism (Cert in Inclusion and Diversity Education, or a Cert in Climate Action and Sustainability, or something along those lines). Easy to get a couple of extra thousand enrolments if they (need to) stoop to Carlow's level.

imacman

garyscargo wrote: »

It was infuriating to see IT Carlow's President Patricia Mulcahy use HEA 2018/19 enrolment figures in a TUSEI Staff Briefing Session to imply that IT Carlow were, effectively, every bit as large as WIT. She did this by including the 2000+ extra part-timers Carlow have enrolled on any type of programme. She then mashed in graduate numbers to effectively imply that Carlow were actually larger than WIT. See here for what I mean:
https://www.tuse.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Staff-TUSEI-Briefing-141220.pdf

Dr Mulcahy was pretty selective in her use of the HEA figures. Well, I can be selective too. Taking the same HEA 2018/19 enrolment figures again, and going for PhD/doctoral enrolments only (in all modes), IT Carlow had a total of 18 students, whereas WIT had a total of 150. She didn't want to highlight that statistic in her briefing presentation though, did she?

Looking again at the HEA data, Carlow's extra 2000+ part-time enrolments were largely undergraduate Certificate students (and I'm not talking full Higher Certs, but lesser special purpose minor awards for a few credits) (check the data yourself!). They had 1521 minor undergrad Cert students, verses 340 at WIT in this way. So there's 1200-ish accounted for immediately. And now they're claiming 11000 (??) students and staff at IT Carlow? (based on some newspaper ad shared on Twitter) Oh puhleaze!!

If this is the sort of nonsense being played out, couldn't WIT do something similar to quickly up enrolments? All WIT staff could be enrolled on a Cert in Academic Practice or similar (very common thing in the UK, so not unheard of). They could also offer a free certificate (to get enrolments up) as a "social outreach initiative", perhaps with a social responsibility or "wokey" type bent to stifle criticism (Cert in Inclusion and Diversity Education, or a Cert in Climate Action and Sustainability, or something along those lines). Easy to get a couple of extra thousand enrolments if they (need to) stoop to Carlow's level.

Dr Mulcahy has been at best condescending and at worst openly hostile to WIT and WIT staff.She has been a very difficult character thoughout the merger negotiations over the last 5 years .This merger won't be a success unless she is moved on . I think that will happen as she has no chance of becoming the TU president

JimWinters

For anyone asking why we want a university in Waterford have a read of this from July 2019. The GDP impact of a fully funded university, UCC, is €852m compared to €108m for WIT. Incidentally, ITC is just €54m while the day the have the same number of students as WIT. The level 6, 10 credit vocational outreach minor awards obviously don’t add the same value Co. Carlow.

Dunmoreroader

garyscargo wrote: »

It was infuriating to see IT Carlow's President Patricia Mulcahy use HEA 2018/19 enrolment figures in a TUSEI Staff Briefing Session to imply that IT Carlow were, effectively, every bit as large as WIT. She did this by including the 2000+ extra part-timers Carlow have enrolled on any type of programme. She then mashed in graduate numbers to effectively imply that Carlow were actually larger than WIT. See here for what I mean:
https://www.tuse.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Staff-TUSEI-Briefing-141220.pdf

Dr Mulcahy was pretty selective in her use of the HEA figures. Well, I can be selective too. Taking the same HEA 2018/19 enrolment figures again, and going for PhD/doctoral enrolments only (in all modes), IT Carlow had a total of 18 students, whereas WIT had a total of 150. She didn't want to highlight that statistic in her briefing presentation though, did she?

Looking again at the HEA data, Carlow's extra 2000+ part-time enrolments were largely undergraduate Certificate students (and I'm not talking full Higher Certs, but lesser special purpose minor awards for a few credits) (check the data yourself!). They had 1521 minor undergrad Cert students, verses 340 at WIT in this way. So there's 1200-ish accounted for immediately. And now they're claiming 11000 (??) students and staff at IT Carlow? (based on some newspaper ad shared on Twitter) Oh puhleaze!!

If this is the sort of nonsense being played out, couldn't WIT do something similar to quickly up enrolments? All WIT staff could be enrolled on a Cert in Academic Practice or similar (very common thing in the UK, so not unheard of). They could also offer a free certificate (to get enrolments up) as a "social outreach initiative", perhaps with a social responsibility or "wokey" type bent to stifle criticism (Cert in Inclusion and Diversity Education, or a Cert in Climate Action and Sustainability, or something along those lines). Easy to get a couple of extra thousand enrolments if they (need to) stoop to Carlow's level.

I hate to borrow slogans from a certain loathsome ex-president stateside but this is blatant fake news coming from Carlow IT.

STOP THE STEAL!!!!!!

Dunmoreroader

I'm sure imacman, invara or someone has probably posted this on here years ago but it hasn't aged one bit in fact it's more relevant than ever; https://universitydiary.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/waterford-and-carlow-and-the-strange-tale-of-a-proposed-technical-university/

Harry Palmr

Clearly a man of sense. He no longer blogs unfortunately. No doubt he'd have a few thoughts.

https://universitydiary.wordpress.com/?s=Waterford+

azimuth17

My understanding is that Dr Mulcahy and Carlow IT refused to engage with the TU process unless the HQ issue was taken off the table.

Harry Palmr

As in taken off the table against Waterford and possibly their favour then?

Christy Browne

azimuth17 wrote: »

My understanding is that Dr Mulcahy and Carlow IT refused to engage with the TU process unless the HQ issue was taken off the table.

Taken off the table and put under it more like

Harry Palmr

Simon Harris on South East Radio (Wexford)

https://www.southeastradio.ie/on-demand/# click the link for Monday 15th February 2021 and move play to 27th minute in. Blatant localism by Harris on Wexford radio as you'd expect. "we're going to delver a Wexford campus" The host asked a few good questions about funding and the nature of what TUSE will actually be doing.

It would be nice if the Minister was willing to show the balls required to come on WLR


https://twitter.com/thefusecampaign/status/1362041359419367427

Johnboy1951

I find it significant that he stated he was in talks with IT Carlow about the campus in Wexford.
No mention of WIT in this regard.

Very significant methinks!

mail

I came across this Forum by chance and am very surprised at the attitude from some people who do not want other countries in the South East to benefit from having a small section of courses in their area.

It cost a lot of money to send a student away to attend a University or to travel a long distance each day and if students can attend a course in their own county and come home the same day, as the students in Waterford can the cost on their families would be much less.

I am sure WIT will continue to prosper regardless. There are students from Wexford, Kilkenny and Tipperary that would like to attend a course but can't afford the cost of daily travel or staying in Waterford. The South East is a region of more counties than just Waterford and nobody is trying to stop WIT or Waterford from prospering.
I worked in Waterford a long time ago and the impression in the area then was that everyone is against them and workers from the surrounding counties were taking their jobs! I see not a lot has not changed in all that time.

spaceCreated

mail wrote: »

I came across this Forum by chance and am very surprised at the attitude from some people who do not want other countries in the South East to benefit from having a small section of courses in their area.

It cost a lot of money to send a student away to attend a University or to travel a long distance each day and if students can attend a course in their own county and come home the same day, as the students in Waterford can the cost on their families would be much less.

I am sure WIT will continue to prosper regardless. There are students from Wexford, Kilkenny and Tipperary that would like to attend a course but can't afford the cost of daily travel or staying in Waterford. The South East is a region of more counties than just Waterford and nobody is trying to stop WIT or Waterford from prospering.
I worked in Waterford a long time ago and the impression in the area then was that everyone is against them and workers from the surrounding counties were taking their jobs! I see not a lot has not changed in all that time.

Another lazy post that adds nothing, ignores everything thats been posted in the thread, creates a strawman argument and puts Waterford as selfish and paranoid. Probably on an old account of someone already posting or banned.

Wonder how they stop any travel at all, just duplicate all courses across all campuses. I guess youd be happy when theres still no basic courses courses such as medicine etc. anywhere in the South East and we're an employment black hole. Wonder where all these lecturers for the same duplicate course will come from across 5-6 campuses in the South East.

If you're here to have a free shot at people from a specific place hope you're delighted with yourself. You must be great craic in real life.

spaceCreated

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Simon Harris on South East Radio (Wexford)

https://www.southeastradio.ie/on-demand/# click the link for Monday 15th February 2021 and move play to 27th minute in. Blatant localism by Harris on Wexford radio as you'd expect. "we're going to delver a Wexford campus" The host asked a few good questions about funding and the nature of what TUSE will actually be doing.

It would be nice if the Minister was willing to show the balls required to come on WLR


https://twitter.com/thefusecampaign/status/1362041359419367427

If its anything like the "new" engineering building or the 24/7 cardiac care they might be waiting a while. But I'm sure the Wexford candidates will be campaigning under "university for Wexford".

azimuth17

mail wrote: »

I came across this Forum by chance and am very surprised at the attitude from some people who do not want other countries in the South East to benefit from having a small section of courses in their area.

It cost a lot of money to send a student away to attend a University or to travel a long distance each day and if students can attend a course in their own county and come home the same day, as the students in Waterford can the cost on their families would be much less.

I am sure WIT will continue to prosper regardless. There are students from Wexford, Kilkenny and Tipperary that would like to attend a course but can't afford the cost of daily travel or staying in Waterford. The South East is a region of more counties than just Waterford and nobody is trying to stop WIT or Waterford from prospering.

I worked in Waterford a long time ago and the impression in the area then was that everyone is against them and workers from the surrounding counties were taking their jobs! I see not a lot has not changed in all that time.

You obviously don't understand or want to understand the issue at all. WIT and Waterford have a good understanding after a decades long campaign for university designation, of what is necessary, ie a university of scale, like UL, based in Waterford as there are thousands of kids leaving the region every year (the brain drain) to go to university elsewhere and they never return. There is an acceptance that the politics of the south east want a facility in Wexford, fair enough, but what is it to be? A smaller recreation of what is in WIT already? A removal of courses in WIT to Wexford? What? How long will that take to achieve even if everyone agrees to it? What will it change? Please also understand that WIT has everything to lose in this TUSE process. 50 years of hard work and a long slow build up of research and development. Wexford and Kilkenny have nothing to lose by playing politics.

Carlow IT has had a campus in Wexford for 25 years and it has failed to attract students. Maynooth has a campus in Kilkenny for years and it has failed to attract students. The lets have everything everywhere argument fails to understand the point that this margarine approach will not improve the region at all. But who cares? Your post would make anyone who has tried to understand the issue despair, but it is probably (and sadly if you are not a troll) the received wisdom as circulated by local politicians who will be happier with a building in Wexford, to point at, even if the ultimate outcome changes nothing in this region. It actually underlines the actual need for a university.

JimWinters

mail wrote: »

I came across this Forum by chance and am very surprised at the attitude from some people who do not want other countries in the South East to benefit from having a small section of courses in their area.

It cost a lot of money to send a student away to attend a University or to travel a long distance each day and if students can attend a course in their own county and come home the same day, as the students in Waterford can the cost on their families would be much less.

I am sure WIT will continue to prosper regardless. There are students from Wexford, Kilkenny and Tipperary that would like to attend a course but can't afford the cost of daily travel or staying in Waterford. The South East is a region of more counties than just Waterford and nobody is trying to stop WIT or Waterford from prospering.
I worked in Waterford a long time ago and the impression in the area then was that everyone is against them and workers from the surrounding counties were taking their jobs! I see not a lot has not changed in all that time.

To be fair, on the surface, they seem like reasonable points. As pointed out the Wexford campus of ITC and Kilkenny campus of Maynooth have not been too successful. The distributed model of having outreach and satellite campuses is costly and does not provide the best education for students. If you have a subset of courses in Wexford then this will still not meet the demands of learners who want a greater choice of courses or disciplines and they will need to travel.

If you look at the full universities, which is what we want in Waterford, they contribute over a billion to the regional economy each year compared to just 200m for WIT and 90m for ITC. That billion will benefit people in Wexford and Kilkenny too.

In Dublin they decided the best educational model was to have three institutes merge to become TUD and centralize them on a new, one billion campus in Grangegorman. We’re not getting investment like that in the south east. What we’re looking for is what the other regions have. If you divide up the TU into each county we end up with something that doesn’t work for anyone as has been proven elsewhere.

The current options are traveling to Waterford or Carlow for an IoT education or having to pay to live in Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway to get a university education. Which is more expensive?

As a region, we deserve the same access as we pay the same taxes but we cannot dilute it to the point of having a campus in every town or it won’t be effective at all.

SeanieW1977

JimWinters wrote: »

To be fair, on the surface, they seem like reasonable points. As pointed out the Wexford campus of ITC and Kilkenny campus of Maynooth have not been too successful. The distributed model of having outreach and satellite campuses is costly and does not provide the best education for students. If you have a subset of courses in Wexford then this will still not meet the demands of learners who want a greater choice of courses or disciplines and they will need to travel.

If you look at the full universities, which is what we want in Waterford, they contribute over a billion to the regional economy each year compared to just 200m for WIT and 90m for ITC. That billion will benefit people in Wexford and Kilkenny too.

In Dublin they decided the best educational model was to have three institutes merge to become TUD and centralize them on a new, one billion campus in Grangegorman. We’re not getting investment like that in the south east. What we’re looking for is what the other regions have. If you divide up the TU into each county we end up with something that doesn’t work for anyone as has been proven elsewhere.

The current options are traveling to Waterford or Carlow for an IoT education or having to pay to live in Dublin, Cork, Limerick or Galway to get a university education. Which is more expensive?

As a region, we deserve the same access as we pay the same taxes but we cannot dilute it to the point of having a campus in every town or it won’t be effective at all.

you forgot to mention the now defunct LIT campus in Clonmel.

imacman

mail wrote: »

I came across this Forum by chance and am very surprised at the attitude from some people who do not want other countries in the South East to benefit from having a small section of courses in their area.

It cost a lot of money to send a student away to attend a University or to travel a long distance each day and if students can attend a course in their own county and come home the same day, as the students in Waterford can the cost on their families would be much less.

I am sure WIT will continue to prosper regardless. There are students from Wexford, Kilkenny and Tipperary that would like to attend a course but can't afford the cost of daily travel or staying in Waterford. The South East is a region of more counties than just Waterford and nobody is trying to stop WIT or Waterford from prospering.
I worked in Waterford a long time ago and the impression in the area then was that everyone is against them and workers from the surrounding counties were taking their jobs! I see not a lot has not changed in all that time.

This is a classic example of the thinking that goes on out when you don't understand how third level works . Colleges campuses aren't post offices and you don't need or have the right to have one in every small to medium town in the country. As has been pointed out by posters already small regionally dispersed campus don't work and seem to be a completely Irish concept driven by local parish pump politics .

If you look at third level in the likes of Germany or France the model is massive full scale campuses in the large cities which serve the region they are based. A centrally based campus with critical mass of services and facilities is what students want and need to have a good college experience. I have no objection to small scale campus offering adult further education/Springboard courses in the smaller towns in the southeast but putting splitting out undergrad or postgrad courses from the main campuses is crazy and has been proven to be a failing strategy over and over again.

Christy Browne

I hate this nonsense. Makes it easier for the media to put it down as a parish pump issue. This isn't a case of 'both sides are as bad each other', Waterford City is the only place it makes sense for the HQ to be.

https://twitter.com/SeanDefoe/status/1362387743519760387?s=20

azimuth17

Christy Browne wrote: »

I hate this nonsense. Makes it easier for the media to put it down as a parish pump issue. This isn't a case of 'both sides are as bad each other', Waterford City is the only place it makes sense for the HQ to be.

https://twitter.com/SeanDefoe/status/1362387743519760387?s=20

Lets put the HQ in a small town within 50 minutes of 6 existing universities in the Greater Dublin region, sure that makes great sense Ted, despite the aims of the Ireland 2040 Plan.

A mess is being created either deliberately or by incompetence by Simon Harris for Fine Gael seat acquisition purposes, in order to deliver a regional camel, which as you all know by now, is a horse designed by a committee in the dark!

curmudgeonly

mail wrote: »

I came across this Forum by chance and am very surprised at the attitude from some people who do not want other countries in the South East to benefit from having a small section of courses in their area.

It cost a lot of money to send a student away to attend a University or to travel a long distance each day and if students can attend a course in their own county and come home the same day, as the students in Waterford can the cost on their families would be much less.

I am sure WIT will continue to prosper regardless. There are students from Wexford, Kilkenny and Tipperary that would like to attend a course but can't afford the cost of daily travel or staying in Waterford. The South East is a region of more counties than just Waterford and nobody is trying to stop WIT or Waterford from prospering.
I worked in Waterford a long time ago and the impression in the area then was that everyone is against them and workers from the surrounding counties were taking their jobs! I see not a lot has not changed in all that time.

You ignore one simple fact, Craic

Students vote with their CAO points every year, and they want to go to a large Campus where they can study but more importantly have the craic. that is the simple reason small outlying campuses never work, unless it is linked to an Industry specific to it.
Education is a multi billion euro business in Ireland whether we like it or not and big means beautiful to the consumers.

imacman

Christy Browne wrote: »

I hate this nonsense. Makes it easier for the media to put it down as a parish pump issue. This isn't a case of 'both sides are as bad each other', Waterford City is the only place it makes sense for the HQ to be.

https://twitter.com/SeanDefoe/status/1362387743519760387?s=20

Did anyone see or hear what reasons or logic Jennifer Murance O'Connor provided for putting the HQ in Carlow

azimuth17

imacman wrote: »

Did anyone see or hear what reasons or logic Jennifer Murance O'Connor provided for putting the HQ in Carlow

You have to wonder.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor
Teachta Dála

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor is an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who has been a Teachta Dála for the Carlow–Kilkenny constituency since the 2020 general election. She previously served as a Senator for the Labour Panel from 2016 from 2020. Wikipedia
Born: May 24, 1966 (age 54 years), Waterford
Office: Teachta Dála since 2020
Previous office: Member of the Seanad Éireann (2016–2020)
Party: Fianna Fáil
Education: Munster Technological University

Christy Browne

From WLR: https://www.wlrfm.com/2021/02/18/varadkar-says-it-would-be-a-real-shame-if-the-tech-uni-was-delayed-over-hq-row/

Deputy Murnane O’Connor described herself as a proud Carlow woman, “we also would be saying that we should also have the headquarters”.

“I don’t want this to be a match between Waterford or Carlow. I think first of all we have to make sure we get the technological university.”

“Then we should we all put in our part and look for headquarters,” she said.

smellyoldboot

azimuth17 wrote: »

You have to wonder.

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor
Teachta Dála

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor is an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who has been a Teachta Dála for the Carlow–Kilkenny constituency since the 2020 general election. She previously served as a Senator for the Labour Panel from 2016 from 2020. Wikipedia
Born: May 24, 1966 (age 54 years), Waterford
Office: Teachta Dála since 2020
Previous office: Member of the Seanad Éireann (2016–2020)
Party: Fianna Fáil
Education: Munster Technological University

She's some woman. Educated in an institute that has yet to formally exist.

Harry Palmr

Christy Browne wrote: »

From WLR: https://www.wlrfm.com/2021/02/18/varadkar-says-it-would-be-a-real-shame-if-the-tech-uni-was-delayed-over-hq-row/

Deputy Murnane O’Connor described herself as a proud Carlow woman, “we also would be saying that we should also have the headquarters”.

“I don’t want this to be a match between Waterford or Carlow. I think first of all we have to make sure we get the technological university.”

“Then we should we all put in our part and look for headquarters,” she said.

Ballymagash politics or what?!