All I want for Christmas!

If you have not written your Santa letter by now, you will be no doubt be waking up, on the morning of Sunday 25^th December, with the very real possibility that the bundle of presents under the tree are either not appropriate or are completely useless for you. That is of course assuming that you have been good during 2016. You therefore have been omitted from the naughty list and are due a visit from Santa in the first place.

Assuming that the majority of us are on the nice list, then we will receive some wonderfully thoughtful presents. We will no doubt be filled with the joy that giving presents also brings. We often forget that giving presents and gifts are equally important, if not more important, than the gifts we receive and this is often overlooked during the festive period.

I will no doubt wake up on Sunday morning and after saying “Happy Christmas” to the fairy on top of our tree, who this year is celebrating her 19^th year in the Garland household, hopefully I’ll find the requested pair of socks and maybe one of the more unusual bottles of Scottish malt under the tree.

As we get older the number of presents under the tree, the number of presents secretly hidden in the tree, behind sparkly tinsel and twinkly lights, diminish year by year. Even the number of cards we now post and receive, lessens each year – we are social media carders now! It is not that Christmas becomes less important as we mature, it is just that our family circumstances change, alter and we adapt to that transformation.

So what should we wish for when we look at what Waterford would ask from Santa?

I do hope, that those with the power and influence, to deliver for Waterford in 2017, have posted their letters in time for us not to be disappointed come early Sunday morning. If I had the influence to write and deliver that letter to Santa, here is what I would have asked for – not a very big list.

The Government is telling us the country is on the up and Ministers are stuffing their own constituency stockings with this extra cash. I would ask for €10 million to invest in UHW’s cardiology unit. Only circa €2.5 million needed to build the unit and circa €7.5 million to staff the unit for the next two to three years. Once it is up and running, the lives it will save, will justify all running costs.

Another €20 million to finally deliver and create a University for Waterford and the South East, including all the bells and whistles needed to attract students and increased research funding. Not a fudged, pressure delivered, hotchpotch multi-campus minestrone soup of an organisation, as being proposed by those in power. But a REAL University based and administered in Waterford City, which would clearly benefit the whole of the South East.

€25 million to develop our SDZ North Quay and Port, to drive a whole new tourism market for Waterford and the South East. If we could develop these two vital pieces of the City’s infrastructure, we could place Waterford City at the very heart of the “Ireland’s Ancient East” tourism project. Making Waterford City the 3-4 night destination stopover, which would be the anchor for exploring the whole of the South East.

Only €55 million and none of it would be in loans. This would go an awfully long way to redress the lack of focused investment in Waterford and the South East. We are at the moment seeing our hospital, our infrastructure and our third level education establishment, being ever so slowly dismantled and methodically stripped. If we are not careful these three essential pieces of infrastructure will disappear for good.

 

If we do not have strong political and public representation, fighting for every Euro of the Government investment pie, we will remain the City which always receives a present, that has been given to us as an afterthought.

Happy Christmas, hope you have been good! Happy St.Andrew’s Day as well.