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06 Sept 2025
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06 Sept 2025
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A giant billboard has been erected in protest amidst the run up to the elections by Derry University Group and former Derry Chamber president, Garvan O’Doherty
A hard-hitting series of billboards highlighting the parlous state of the North West economy will be erected in Derry in the run-up to the elections.
The ‘Fifty Years of Failure’ campaign has erected the first of four billboards, a 17m by 2m billboard demanding a new university for the North West, just three hundred yards from the Magee campus of Ulster University.
This billboard is set to move by the weekend to a new, more prominent spot, situated at the car park at the bottom of Asylum Road.
Several other billboards, all of which challenge Stormont and the main political parties to regenerate the North West, will be installed in the coming weeks.
The non-party campaign is organised by former Derry Chamber president, Garvan O’Doherty, and the Derry University Group.
A spokesperson said: “It’s time to put an end to the cosy complicity pedalling the narrative that Belfast’s rising tide will lift all boats. It doesn’t; it never has and it never will.
“We would encourage anyone considering voting in the coming elections to study the contents of these billboards and start asking direct questions of the canvassers coming to their door.
“The North West will never regenerate until it has its own independent university. Anyone talking in terms of expanding UU at this stage is deeply deluded.
"Even if they were interested in helping - which history has taught us is not the case - their money for the next decade and more is pre-spent in Belfast.
“We need to commit ourselves to establishing a new cross-border university, as recommended by the Royal Irish Academy’s expert taskforce, as the way forward."
Derry University Group have campaigned tirelessly with the support from many prominent Derry figures and councillors for a new university in the North West.
They continue to pressure Stormont and Ulster University to fulfill their promise of an additional 10,000 full time students for Magee by 2030 as part of the 'New Decade New Approach' deal.
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