Just where is OUR money???

We have heard many a local radio news snippet, over recent months and read countless column inches in our local newspapers, about the millions of Euros promised for Waterford’s infrastructural projects. These projects were to be “game changers” that would bring some parity to the complete lack of “regional investment” over countless numbers of years.

Yet, we are now, how many weeks on, from the last General Election and can anyone honestly says we have received a €1 towards these so called “game changers”? So many political representatives indicated that these would bankroll Waterford’s economic future.

The North Quay, where work seems to have literally ground to a halt. Due, I am sure, to engineering concerns around weight loadings on the old, frail and fragile “piles” that are precariously holding up the hundreds of tons of rubble. This whole area has been designated as a Strategic Development Zone (SDZ), which is good news and I recall that €30 million had been promised and earmarked, by FG, to develop the site and link it directly to the City Centre. That was over 16 months ago!

Has any of this money actually been drawn down, excuse the banking terminology and allocated to Waterford Council to start this much needed regeneration process? I don’t recall hearing or seeing any big media fanfare announcing that the “cash” had been lodged into the Council coffers. Therefore I have to assume that NO money has yet been received for the SDZ to start and ultimately flourish.

This same sad story can be repeated at the Airport. We were promised many Euros to develop that runway, allowing larger jets access to Waterford and the 500,000 people of South East region. But, once again, not one cent of this appears to have come our way. In fact we are now being told that money is available for everything else, but the essential runway extension!

In the meantime, the people of the South East are discovering that Dublin is now much, much closer and easier to reach. The M9 has not a traffic light in sight and with the Newlands Cross flyover, the journey time to Dublin is more than manageable and predictable. The east coast N11/M11 route from Wexford is also to a large extent quicker than days of old and when the New Ross second bridge comes on stream, we will have a choice of two very fast direct routes to Dublin.

I also imagine that the business case for a consistent, less than two hour drive from Dublin to Waterford, is now working against us. Many FDI investors have far longer commute times to work! So the case for a regional airport in the south east diminishes even further. This assumption seems to carry some weight when we review the fact that only circa 6 FDI visits have taken place in Waterford this year! We seem once again to be on the road to becoming a less attractive alternative to many other cities and regions.

There is the ongoing debacle around UHW – no need to regurgitate the shambolic mess that some have created here.

So, these three are examples of promises that have not materialised. Money that had been “earmarked” for Waterford and yet none, nil, nada, zilch, seems to have been paid to us, to start our economic recovery and get our City and region booming once again!

On foot of the non-delivery of these funds, we are hearing far too many of our political representatives scoring points against each other. Rather than working out just where this alternative money might come from, they spin the “if we were in Government line”.

Why do other political regions deliver actual real infrastructure investment? Surely, all politicians have the same access to identical Civil Servants, who might just be able to point them in the right direction, explaining how to loosen the purse strings.

We are systematically being downgraded and this will continue unless we see the promised Euros coming our way to stem the tide.

Sadly, we appear to have too many King Cnuts (more commonly know as Canute).