Waterford University discussion

I'd say they will defer any decision until after an election. That way they haven't lost votes anywhere and can campaign in each constituency on the basis of fighting for their constituency and putting the case for the veterinary college to be located in their constituency to the government.

Jesus!

Worth noting, without planning permission in place, no matter how easy or straightforward it may be, the project is frozen. So earliest is Feb/March 2025, realistically after election, with govt perhaps taking a long time to form.

So, as a practical matter the project is now dead, and moves back into being an issue for political manifestos and promises.

Surely SETU gets awarded the new vet school based on UL pulling out, that would be a big win and a step in the right direction

Edit they are just not proceeding in building the new school, their application for courses still stands I assume.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-41474506.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

€50m is around the cost of a full veterinary school. I wouldn't be surprised if the Department shelve the building of a full vet school and go with lesser options in SETU and ATU of just certain courses. I think they'll be hesitant to build another full Vet School on the eastern side of the country which might hit SETU, and ATU could struggle to attract a full suite of vet academics if they suggest building anywhere other than Galway.

The other challenge is pay The highest academic pay scale in ATU seems to be around €115k, whilst in the established University's full Prof's go to €175k. SETU I think has a higher pay scale for academics than ATU (€127k?) and so would probably be better placed than ATU to recruit a full team of academics. I think Waterford and Carlow would be better placed to attract staff than most ATU locations other than Galway.

I'm not against any offering or institution. I'm offering an opinion that UL pulling out of the race for the full Vet School throws this up in the air. UL were by far the favoured option to get the go ahead for a Vet Medicine School. With them out of the race I can see some hesitancy on the governments side in building any new facility on the eastern side of the country and I also suspect that there is still some snobbery in government / civil service in allocating such a large nationally strategically important entity to a TU. UCD are not in the race for this funding and there is no way government will fund an expansion of the UCD vet facility.

Of the two entities still in the running, I would rate SETU ahead of ATU, due primarily to the fact that it can (currently) offer higher salaries, and other than Galway my opinion is that you would struggle to attract a full suite of vet academics to some of the smaller locations that ATU operates in. But as I said above I think the government plan was to allocate this significant investment to the west coast with vet nursing programmes to the TU's.

It's all my opinion and conjecture, we should hopefully know soon.

It would be much easier to just expand the UCD course.

Thank you as I was unaware of the teachings associated with veterinarian studies.

I would have expected UL to get the veterinarian courses and both ATU and SETU to perhaps being awarded vet nursing studies.

With UL no building a vet school and both ATU and SETU not having a vet school it will be difficult to see what happens.

When you say hospital attached do you mean some sort of animal hospital? I couldn't imagine there are too many of them in the country?

Thank you for the info!

Possible an election due this year so hard to see any decision being made unless it's an election promise, then a new government might have other ideas or UL could be back in the game depending on ministerial appointments.

Yep, I see the report into it's spending was fairly critical especially of the Dunnes Stores and housing purchases.

If you are really bored you can look at the PAC hearings on the purchase of the Dunne’s site. No surprise the UL President retired for ‘health reasons’ after the purchase.

The subsequent purchase of the houses at the prices paid without a proper valuation was unbelievable given that they were already under serious pressure on the Dunne’s site.

Disgraceful, Waterford will be left out again.

So theoretically, SETU can use Kildalton for delivering the course and block book placements at UCD vet hospital?

Obviously it would be nicer to have a a vet hospital closer but with a motorway and decent train service it's not an awful option.

I presume it's no different to nurses doing a course in SETU and then being placed at UHW for a period of time.

I agree if you are going to do it, do it right but this government in particular haven't a good track record when it comes to 3rd level spending.

The whole notion of a TU in my eyes has been nothing more than just placing the name University in cities and towns but that's an argument for another day.

They will grant the course to someone so if it's not UCD then either UL, SETU or ATU will need to run the course and send their students on placement to some vet school with the hope of government providing funding in time to build a dedicated vet school and vet hospital in which ever University is chosen.

Yep I agree and think that was my point. Get the course, yes you might not have vet hospital etc, you find a solution by using UCD vet hospital or another and in time you work towards getting a vet hospital and whatever else is required to make the course a success.