On the day Ivan Cooper, one of the founding members of the Civil Rights movement, was buried Derry is economically and socially worse off than before his life’s work started.
The people of Derry and Strabane and the wider north-west area are soon to discover that the Graduate Entry Medical School, first promulgated with the birth of the new millennium, will almost certainly not be delivered in time for student intake in 2020. Welcome to the latest entry in the catalogue of failure of one of the most beautiful and historic cities in Europe.
Listening to the media hype, one would almost believe that the decades of photo shoots and promises are finally coming to fruition. The university in Derry is ready to go. Academic staff are in place, the premises identified, the teaching programme organised, lecturers appointed. Even, at last the University of Ulster and wonder of wonders, Queen’s University seem to be on board. Except it’s not happening. Again.
I awakened the other morning to the headline news on Radio Foyle’s breakfast show, to hear our MP Elisha McCallion report that in a meeting in Stormont, Richard Pengelly had said that he could finalise the deal to get the GEMS delivered. I was there at the table, representing my party, Aontú, and that was certainly not the tenor of the discussion.
While it is true that Mr Pengelly admitted that it was theoretically possible that he could sign off on the business case, he repeatedly reiterated that he was unable to take anything else into account except bean-counting. Money, or the lack of it, is his department’s only remit. The business case needs to be robust.
He cannot consider the wider issues of systematic, politically motivated impoverishment inflicted upon this city by successive governments. He cannot take into account that a university and the economic growth which that inevitably entails would help redress this huge injustice. He cannot consider the fact that of the budget for third-level education in the north, only 5 per cent goes to Derry. He cannot consider that since the Good Friday Agreement, economic activity in Derry has fallen by 7 per cent, compared to a rise of 14 per cent in Belfast. He cannot consider hospital waiting lists of up to four years, that people do not have access to the services to which they are entitled and deserve. Repeatedly we were told that only a minister could take the wider picture into account, and only a minister could get this project over the line in time.
Anyone who knows me will understand that it gives me no pleasure to say that those of us who feared that the Stormont assembly would only serve to further divide and sectarianise politics here have been vindicated. The only issues which seem to concentrate the minds of our elected leaders concern culture wars, which are of little relevance to people living in housing stress, poverty ill-health and hopelessness.
Lack of political leadership is one side of the coin. The other side is the abject failure of the University of Ulster to deliver for Derry over decades.
Cllr ANNE McCLOSKEY
Aontú, Derry and Strabane Council
Long-term damage of 11-plus tests so seldom acknowledged
A report from the Right to Education group warns that 11-plus tests are damaging children’s mental health. One teacher who took part in the study said that what shocked her most was pupils crying years after taking the exams, ‘talking about how they never felt good enough’. And it’s this long-term damage, so seldom acknowledged, that is soul destroying of future potential.
For the majority of interviewees ‘failing’ the 11-plus was an event that created feelings of inferiority. It reinforced the belief that they were secondary. In each case they were fed a negative image of their abilities and their failure was personalised.
Here’s what two interviewees had to say about their experience of 11-plus failure 30 years on.
Carol: “Whilst it as an event, in a sense is less immediate and it has gone away, the waves spreading out from the ripples that it created are still very much there. This is an old wound and most people tend to leave old wounds alone, they may walk with a limp, but they’ve got used to it, even though it has all sorts of ramifications in their present lives.”
Laura: “So passing an exam at 11 you’re being recognised by your parents, teachers, by your peers and by the school that is going to take you. Somebody has actually recognised you, that okay whatever the description is you’re brighter or but you’re worth it and of course the folks that don’t pass, that’s the message that says, ‘Sorry you’re not worth us putting any more investment in’. That’s what it says. Of course you don’t know that when you’re 11 but that’s what it’s saying.”
JIM CURRAN
Downpatrick, Co Down
Economic policy
According to Brian Feeney, Britain would be much better off if it had joined the Euro currency (June 5). He quotes Jacques Delors, who once said the British refused to contemplate giving up the pound not for economic reasons but for “psycho-political reasons”. So, Brian believes England would be much better off if interest rates were set in Frankfurt instead of London?
He thinks having Britain’s economic policy formulated in Strasbourg would suit British industry more than if decided in Westminster?
There are two things which guarantee any country’s sovereignty – the currency and the sword (i.e. a standing army). You can be sure the UK will not give up either of them. It was the Euro which caused the massive economic crisis in the 26-county state.
MICHAEL O’FLYNN
Cork city
Poverty issues
It is not pensioners who are having to queue at food banks to survive. Governments raise pensions every year because we pensioners vote for them.
A pensioner who has not paid enough National Insurance or who does not have an occupational pension will still get Pension Credit of at least £167 a week and related benefits towards housing and other costs. We all get non-means tested travel passes and winter fuel payments. Compare that to those below pension age on Universal Credit, Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance and the ill on Employment Support Allowance. Their basic amount of £73.90 a week has been frozen for more than three years.
Families now get no increase in benefits if they have a third child. How can these groups be expected to pay for their TV licences and yet they can be taken to court for non-payment?
MARGARET MARSHALL
Belfast BT8
Expression of thanks
Cavaliers In Need wish to thank the people of Belfast who gave so generously at our Street collection on April 20. We raised £1,730.79.
ANTHEA SPROULE
