Guest Column: "Stop looking for credit - Get the job done!"

Every time Ulster University releases a press statement announcing it has been embarrassed into providing the very bare minimum for Magee, Derry politicians break their necks pushing each other out of the way to seek credit.

Newsflash: you are being conned and the whole city knows it. And deep down, you know it too. Your rush to take the glory - where there is none - demeans you.

Instead of demanding ownership and control of your own civic university - a university of which you are the main stakeholder - you come off like you’re auditioning for head prefect of a school that has never loved you and is only here to drain your parents dry.

Stormont has never delivered for Derry and nor has UU. Fact: we have had 100 years of one and 60 years of the other, and this city is the only major conurbation on this island with a declining population and net migration.

Our parties have spent the past decades variously blaming each other, UU, civil service, and the NIO - without ever once putting forward a viable solution to the North West’s crisis - a crisis that has now endured since partition. The latest command paper from the British government underlines their complete lack of commitment to the North West.

We wasted a decade waiting for a One Plan with no political buy-in (9400 students by 2020), and are now wasting the next, waiting for New Decade New Approach (10000 students by 2030); a document our schoolmasters in UU rejected before the ink was even dry.

While the Assembly was suspended, every one of our leaders promised us that Derry would be their immediate and entire focus as soon as the government was reconstituted. None of us believed it of course, but neither were any of us prepared for the complete lack of interest shown over the past few weeks.

Everyone is now so busy running for the Westminster elections over the next year, that anything that can’t be a top line on the manifesto is being dropped. And the Derry Agenda does not play, and has never played in Belfast.

If it is raised at all, it will be dismissed with the claim that Derry is always whining - or the old reliable, it is the other guy’s fault.

A5 funding from Irish Government welcomed as ‘watershed moment’

So, in short, anyone who still believes that either Stormont or UU is the solution to our failing region is either an innocent or a fool - or has been bought off.

RIA REPORT

There is good news, however. There are genuine plans in place that can deliver for the North West, plus a government strategy - and budgets - to accompany it.

Next month, the Royal Irish Academy - with the backing of Dublin - will produce its newest report into how the regeneration of the North West can be led by its university sector.

The Derry University Group has called on politicans to finally deliver for the city.

These are plans that will allow Derry to play the lead role in its own economic regeneration, building on the 2020 Future Focus report which laid out the blueprint for a new NWU.

The new plans will be backed with the opportunity for finance - and will be constructed to dovetail into Dublin’s Project Ireland 2040 plan. The North West as a metropolitan area straddling both sides of the border should, and will, be part of this key Irish government strategy.

800m euro-plus funding package will benefit Northern Ireland

Privately, it is understood, however, that some thinkers close to the Academy are perplexed and frustrated at the lack of ambition from political leaders in the North West. That their confidence has been so eroded they don’t understand the opportunity here and have forgotten how to demand their entitlement.

To them, the Derry University Group would say this. Many years ago, one very wise public representative privately advised us that the only way we’re going to get any movement in the North West is to stop playing nice and become a ‘non-stop pain in the arse’. And while we would never aspire to be difficult or rude, that central tenet - that we needed to toughen up a bit - has served us well.

So our message to all our leaders across every sector today is to quit trying to please the overlords in Belfast, stop being so timid, don’t be bought off by promises of working parties and UU-led expansion - and take the gloves off.