Good News - Winter is just around the corner!

The end of Autumn, according to the meteorological calendar, is the 30^th November, which also happens to be St.Andrew’s Day, the patron saint of Scotland. Though, we do not quite have such an energetically celebrated festival, as that afforded to St.Patrick, here in Ireland and around the world. In fact we do very little to celebrate this day and in terms of turning the world blue we do not hold a patch on you guys, when you, year after year manage to turn the whole world green on 17^th March. Maybe one day!

With Autumn over, wonderful Winter quickly follows suit and I must say, that this is one of my favourite times of the year. Getting out on a very crisp cold morning, for a brisk, effervescent walk, or short sharp ride in my lurid Lycra, does me the world of good. It clears my head, refreshing my mind about all the good things we have here on our doorstep, in wonderful Waterford.

So, whichever way you package it, there really is so much to look forward to this Winter.

Over the last week, we have seen a mini retail tsunami, with new retailers opening in Ireland’s oldest City Centre. There have been queues and queues of young ladies, waiting patiently in line to buy lippy, liner, lashes, and much, much more, from a new “all things makeup” brand, that has opened in City Square Shopping Centre. This hysteria follows hotfoot (excuse the pun), on the back of a new shoe brand, which has rightly chosen Waterford City as its south east flagship store. These two brands will certainly add to our retail offering and are excellent news, just in time for Christmas.

The retail expansion over the last few weeks has continued to improve, through the work of some stakeholders and in particular, the committee members of the Waterford Business Group. They have been working tirelessly away in the background, making personal contacts, speaking to and encouraging the relocation of brands to our City Centre. We cannot underestimate the volume of voluntary work undertaken on our behalf, to make Waterford a better place.

Hopefully, T & H will be opening soon and the planning issues being encountered by several other brands, will be resolved in a positive light. Thus, adding significantly to our and our visitors’ retail experience of the City Centre. The more attractive and unique our City Centre becomes, the better the shopping fulfilment will be for everyone.

Of course Winter in Waterford, now comes with Winterval attached too. Incidentally, a name Mr McCarthy, at WLR, has difficulty liking! I heard him mention this on Friday’s programme and he might be right, as Mrs Garland too has difficulty with the name. Anyway, Winterval will be back on our streets on 25^th November, a week later than last year and this will also be the date for the switching on, of our Christmas lights. This sparked much debate last week and I for one, believe that the third Friday in November is the correct switching on, of the lights and the start of our Christmas retail period. This change of date, at the behest of whom and with no consultation with our retailers, has put us a week behind our competitors. Bah Humbug!

I have no doubt that there are plans afoot, to do something special on Friday 18^th November. This should be the lights on date. To this extent keep an eye on the local press for further details. Now that’s the spirit of Christmas, giving something back to the people of Waterford!

So, there is much to look forward to in Waterford. We inevitably start the countdown, to that big red, beardy one, coming down the chimney. Delivering all manner of weird, wonderful and unwanted presents. Top of MY present wish list, are lower Council car parking rates for ALL!

Remember that the bountiful few weeks in the run up to Christmas, may well account for up to 30% of our local businesses annual turnover.

Shop smart, shop local, shop Waterford!

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).

Band!

As I have said and written about, on too many occasions to mention, this City has a smorgasbord of talent that just needs the right mechanisms to be showcased. We really do have leaders in so many fields. But, unfortunately the flip side to this is that we don’t in truth actually seem to be able shout from the rafters, to tell the outer reaches of our region that this is the case.

I have been attending the Massed Bands Concert now for a numbers of years and this year my Mother, Pam, and her partner, Ally, made their way from Scotland, by land and sea, to stay in Dunmore East for the last three weeks. This trip coincided with the Massed Bands Concert and naturally I wished to bring them along to hear some of the very best that Waterford has to offer.

Now, my Mum is a very talented and special lady. She, in a past life was a secondary school teacher in, shall I politely say, one of the tougher areas of County Fife – Cowdenbeath! An old mining town in Scotland, that would perhaps best be known for their semi-professional football team’s nickname “The Blue Brazil”. Incidentally, neither the football, scenery or the weather has any similarities with Brazil!

The Blue Brazil

Whilst teaching not only did Mum find time to create, pen and direct a number school musicals. She was very heavily involved in local amateur dramatics, through Glenrothes Amateur Musical Association (GAMA), wrote and starred in many a “one-woman” show and in general has a capacity for spotting genuine talent and talented people. So, this showcase of Waterford musical talent would be right up her street and something that she and Ally would enjoy to the max.

We duly turned up at the venue on Friday 14^th October, cushions in hand to protect our delicate derrières, and having met some of the performers and volunteers, we settled down for a night of emotional highs and lows.

Oh boy, this concert once again delivered!!!!

The unique combination of the De La Salle Scout Pipe Band, City of Waterford Brass, Thomas Francis Meagher Fife and Drum Band, and the Barrack Street Concert Band, supported by the Waterford Sting Ensemble, made very sweet music. The task of bringing four very distinct musical sounds together cannot be underestimated. Both Julie Quinlan and Mark Fitzgerald waved their magical batons with astonishing affect. The combination of pipes, drums, brass, strings and the “big triangle” was an intoxicating mix.

During the pipe medley my own national anthem “Flower of Scotland” was played and three loan figures stood up, in front of an audience of hundreds, and we sang away to our hearts’ content. Though I did notice the odd strange look of “What are those three doing?” and I am sure that once it was explained that this was Scotland’s national anthem, we were Scottish through and through, then all was ok and we were not to be labelled loopy!

The evening once again delivered an exhilarating night of musical tunes, airs, marches and some wonderful singing by Valerie Leahy, Donna Roche and David Flynn.

If you missed this annual jamboree of the very best of Waterford talent, then you must put the date in your diary for 2017 and ensure that you tell the world.

I ask Mum and Ally what they thought of the evening. Not only were they both delighted to be asked to attend, by Ger O’Brien, they, like me and the hundreds of people who came along, felt the evening was magnificent.

A City of Music, we certainly are, and yet outside of our ancient walls, we seem to be lacking in that confidence to tell people that, at some things, we are amongst the very best in the region if not the nation. We have this fear of telling other people, which seems to be endemic and we must ALL work much harder to promote the many talented people we all know live here in Waterford.

Maybe the missing few who did not attend have a big part to play in this going forward?

P.S. Well done Mr Q - you know who you are!

“You can have any colour as long as it’s orange!”

On Sunday 9^th October over 2,000 participants completed the Solas Cancer Support Centre South East Run and Walk for Life. This event is one of the biggest participant events in the South East region and is now one of those annual events, that many a runner and walker make a priority, to train for, and to take part in.

The 2016 event started on the beautiful quays of Ireland’s Oldest City, against the backdrop of the mighty River Suir and the Thomas Francis Meagher Bridge. This rises majestically, over 100 metres, as a modern symbol of Waterford in the 21st Century. This mix of young and old was replicated in orange on Sunday. With hundreds of mums, dads, grannies, grandpas, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends and even assorted dogs, all working together to complete the 10-mile run or 5-mile walk.

Everyone wore orange – even some dogs!

There were no other colour choices and, unlike the misquoted Henry Ford, it is the “no other colour option”, for the t-shirt, that makes the Run and Walk for Life the most stunning of visual events. 

It is this tsunami of orange, particularly at the start and finish line, which shows the real commitment of ALL the people who fundraise for the Solas Cancer Support Centre.

As Chair of the organising committee I had once again a very dedicated team of volunteers, supported by Centre staff, delivered another stunning, safe and uplifting event. This committee worked tirelessly, in the background, putting the necessary logistics in place that allowed so many to raise the necessary funds to allow the Centre to operate its support services. Such has been the success of the fundraising efforts that a Dungarvan support service has been introduced to provide for the population in the “wesht” of the County.

Having helped marshal, with the Garland Clan and Waterford Business Group, on the busy junction at the John’s Street, we moved to the finish line. But not before I afforded myself the opportunity to have some great fun and interaction, aided and abetted by a loudhailer. “Negative encouragement!” was one comment from a bystander, listening intently to “Sherk the Steward”.

At the finish line we organised the Fun for Life. There were numerous food stalls, play areas and enough bouncy castles to keep even the most hyperactive child amused for hours on end.

I positioned myself just a few meters away from the line to try to acknowledge every runner and walker that crossed, having completed either the 10-mile or 5-mile route. It was so refreshing and emotional to see the thousands of people breaking the timing beam, having completed and finished their respective courses.

Witnessing tears of joy and obvious tears of sadness, it was an emotional rollercoaster for anyone who watched the finishers. Many who burst into tears were very obviously remembering loved ones that they had lost to cancer and by completing the course, in their honour, their cherished memories will live on forever.

There were dogs pulling their owners, owners pulling their dogs, mums pushing double buggies, parents collecting their very small children and crossing the line holding hands. It was a sight to bring tears of joy to every pair of eyes.

The Solas Cancer Support Centre South East Run and Walk for Life is truly a mammoth voluntary team endeavour. The tens of stewards lining the route, the tens of people handing out water, bananas, “healthy bars” (some chocolate as well but it is nice to get a treat!), the support services who provided medical support, other voluntary groups who marshalled key road traffic junctions, and so on. All of these people played their part in making the 2016 event another benchmark success story.

The bar well and truly has been raised.

Regular readers will know that I am involved in many a Waterford committee and I have to go on record as saying that the Run and Walk for Life Committee and the wider voluntary team, are very special. They, to a man and a woman, knew what was needed and delivered in spades. 

Orange has always been the new black here in Waterford. 

Your budget is just around the corner!

Waterford Council is currently preparing the 2017 budget. Last week we saw the first shots being fired in this annual battle of the abacuses. Our Councillors, quite rightly, opposed and ultimately rejected an Executive proposal that would have increased your household charge, roof tax or Council tax by 7.5%.

This planned increase was to fill an indicated, circa €1,300,000, deficit hole in the 2017 budget. Interestingly, a similar figure also needed to be found, for a fissure that appeared in the 2016 budget – due, we were told, to the recalculation of rateable income from mobile phone masts and Irish Water infrastructure (I think!). With the direct result that an empty premises, commercial rates charge, of circa 20%, of the rateable value being introduced and levied on all empty premises in the City and County.

To be asking struggling households to stretch already broken family budgets and pay further housing tax would take even more money out of our very fragile local economy. The decision of our Councillors to reject this proposal will of course mean that the indicated shortage of €1,300,000 will have to be found elsewhere.

The normal “cash cow” for such a shortfall is of course commercial or business rates. Unfortunately, there are only so many times that you can milk a cow and as we are on the third tier of Ireland’s recovery table, any money coming out of our delicate recovery is a worry.

To put it simply, there are businesses in and around John Robert’s Square paying circa €40,000 in commercial rates. Assuming that they are working on a generous margin of 10% then these businesses will have to generate €400,000 in sales just to pay the rates bill alone. Now add on salaries, electricity, water rates, employers’ liabilities, insurance etc and you will see that in no time at all, a business could quite easily have to turnover in excess of €1,000,000 just to open its doors to a paying customer – that is how hard it is to do business!

Taking any additional money out of our delicate local economy, will have a detrimental effect on employment. Unfortunately, everything is linked economically through very precarious bonds and any attempt to stretch those bonds, which are already at breaking point, will have catastrophic consequences. 

Whilst we can see very small shoots of recovery, we need to keep the momentum going in the right direction and taking money out of our local economy is not the way to go. We need to be promoting spending, supporting business investment and most importantly encouraging people back into the very heart of our City, to shop locally.

There are a whole host of holistic measures needed to make this happen.

For instance, we need to start bringing people back into the City Centre on Friday evenings. One way is by getting rid of ridiculous car parking charges that continue way past 6pm. How can “early-bird” offers work if you are paying €3 or €4 in car parking charges? Businesses CANNOT stay open on a Friday evening if the footfall is not there! As it is TOO expensive to open for 2 or 3 hours when you are paying such high rates, wages, utilities etc etc. If you are only turning over a few Euros in sales, there is no point in being open and no business cannot continue to sustain mounting losses.

Someone somewhere needs to make these brave decisions and tackle why we cannot attract footfall into the City Centre.

Our Councillors rejected a proposed increase in household tax. Now, despite an apparent black hole in the finances, they need to push the Executive to be creative with car parking charges and, perhaps, insist on a pilot scheme to get rid of Friday night charges altogether. Try this and see if footfall increases. Try this and see if the City Centre can in fact attract people from other free car parking areas around the City Centre. A simple solution to a rather large elephant in the room!

Alas, I fear that the fear of change will result in maintaining the status quo.

“Are we there yet?”

“Are we there yet?” are the very words that we all fear, here in Waterford and the South East, when directly related to ambulance transfer times for cardiac patients.

These are the dreaded four words that no wife, husband, father, mother, brother, sister, grandmother or grandfather will every wish to ask, when accompanying a loved one, unfortunate enough to need cardiac care outside the Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm window available in University Hospital Waterford.

If you have not experienced the anxiety of this horrifying journey, and I have not, to Cork or Dublin, in the back of an ambulance, then none of us can understand the stress of knowing that the clock is ticking ever so slowly to and, more than likely, beyond that 90 minute safety window.

The simple fact is that getting to Cork and Dublin, even with the blues and twos, will in truth take longer than 90 minutes. One simple hold up, one unaccounted for set of road works, a sporting weekend, a car crash or simply hitting rush hour traffic, will eat into this safety time zone. No matter what spin is put on this by Minister Harris or other Government Ministers it would be a miracle if that 90 minute window, could ever be achieved in the real the world.

Perhaps, the Minister has never driven to Cork along the N25? It is at best an o.k. road and at worst full of bottlenecks, eating into any journey time. The road does not allow for consistent travel and therefore we cannot rely on time to getting to our sister Cork hospital for coronary care within the golden timeframe.

Going to Dublin now has a much better dependable journey time, up the M9 motorway. That is until you hit the outskirts of Dublin. Once again you are in the hands of the traffic gods and getting into the heart of Dublin can be hit or miss. Even if you are in the back of an ambulance, when every second counts, it is still a time gamble.

24th September 2016

Our Minister is adamant that he is “not for turning”, a modern day Mrs Thatcher perhaps. He has been at pains to let everyone know that the Herity Report, with all its flaws, will be taken as Gospel. The people in this South East region will forever be playing traffic roulette in the back of an ambulance.

I recall meeting Minister Harris, on a number of occasions, in his previous role with reference to his old portfolio, which included responsibility for national Government tendering. Thankfully, he listened to our reasoned and sound arguments to make changes, to allow local businesses to compete with multi-national companies and he did implement change on this basis. So we can take some encouragement from this. He is sometimes willing to listen.

As I have said many times, perhaps we have gone about this in the wrong way! Look at our Teflon neighbour, Mr Lowry, getting ALL that he wanted, in terms of local health care provision for Tipperary. We would not have heard about this, only that we started looking at what other “Government Independents” were getting for helping Enda come back into power. Mr Lowry went about his business quietly, methodically and ultimately delivered “exactly what it said on the tin” of his election manifesto.

Hook & Browne?

Have we been too naive in fighting this battle in the glare of the national media? Quite simply we have given the likes of Messer Hook and Browne the opportunity to use a substantial baseball bat, to bash Waterford once again. They are collectively laughing at us from their Dublin Towers. But rest assured if they were unfortunate enough to have to endure a 90 minute life or death journey in the back of an ambulance then their mindset would change in an instant.

We marched once again in monsoon like conditions, at the weekend, and received breviloquent RTE coverage. Where now for the Waterford and the South East?

What is guaranteed is that it will take more than 90 minutes to fix this dilemma.

One year on!

It has been one year since I started writing my wee column in the Waterford Today. WOW, time does fly as you get older!

I switched from another “Waterford” free sheet, due to the fact that it was not really being produced in Waterford. As a “blow-in”, who is passionate about Ireland’s Oldest City, I was very conscious that to be supporting the “Made in Waterford” brand, I had to be contributing to a Waterford produced product. A chat with Paddy (The Editor) Gallagher and we agreed a seamless transfer to Waterford Today. A publication that has a small, but significant, tagline that you may never even have noticed - “ABC accredited circulation”.

It is funny that having worked, so many years ago, for the exhibition arm of a European publishing company, that literally sold hundreds of thousands of pounds of monthly advertising, I would once again understand the significance of Audit Bureau of Circulation figures. These are figures that detail just how many people are reading a particular publication.

Sometimes, you do wonder if such stated figures are correct. But, judging by the number of people who do tell me that they read my wee column, on a regular basis, I have to assume that, in the case of Waterford Today, their readership numbers are extremely high and reflective of the ABC accreditation.

That is good news for me. As I know that when the newspaper arrives through your letterbox or is collected at your local newsagent, you will read this and share with other family members in the household. Yes, I also publish the article as a blog and this in turn is shared through the Waterford Business Group and the Ferrybank Newsletter (both on Facebook). These additional outlets give the article extremely high readership numbers and for that I am eternally thankful and, well, surprised and humbled.

To have the opportunity to speak one’s mind, through the medium of print, without the need to hide behind a pseudonym, is a wonderful opportunity to spark debate and openly discuss significant issues. As can be seen from the reaction to my recent article on Summerval. Front page headlines in one weekly newspaper and headline billing on Deise AM!

The point of such articles is to inform, you, members of the general public, by making more

transparent the information that is readily available to you, but is perhaps deliberately difficult to find. For Waterford to move forward we do need more inclusiveness and this starts with early engagement and a more open communication flow. Something that we in Waterford are, if the truth be told, not particularly good at.

There appears to be a communication block when it comes to getting many a vital message across. Maybe, the people of Waterford have just switched off to the current crop of communicators, as they feel that they are constantly being spun. Or perhaps the way that the information, deigned to be divulged, is being packaged is wrong, inappropriate and written in gobbledegook. The messaging becomes irrelevant because it is presented very poorly.

An advert on local radio does not reach ALL the masses. A notice in the local papers is NOT always read. A leaflet left in a public building is NOT always picked up, and so on.

To get any message across and understood you need a combination of many resources. Perhaps the one most forgotten about and most powerful is face to face interaction. Nothing beats “wearing out the old shoe leather” when you need to maximise communication messaging.

My wee column, “Waterford Business Matters”, is my contribution to help readers understand the many, many, issues that I see face the City, County and SE Region. If we do not know the issues then we cannot tackle the source of our problems.

Economically and socially we are in a very tough place and I feel that we need to be more open, honest and frank with our discussions on how to make Waterford so much better for EVERYONE.

Roll on the next 12 months.