Waterford University discussion

Town is gone to the dogs lately

Matt Shanahan saying that new vet school could be announced later today at the ploughing championships.

Reports are that it's Veterinary Medicine (not nursing) for both SETU and ATU. I have to say I'm really surprised at that. 80 graduates combined a year with the first intake next year. Really interested to see how this is going to go, not much time to get this up and running, staffed and accredited but if there's a will and the ambition to do it then it's great news for second level students interested in Vet. Hopefully the CAO points required for entry will come down as a result.

I think this is very welcome none the less. Yes it likely won’t be on a par with UCD but it’s something positive to grow and brings a lot of Kudos to SETU and also Kildalton college will benefit too. Congratulations to the college for landing it

Very welcome news for all in WIT before it was SETU, all the resent staff and everyone who worked hard to provide excellent courses at Kildalton in Piltown over the years.

Sorry to rain on your parade but I have heard from a source in the college everything will be based in Kildalton with the students fully based out there.Any capital development and building will be in Kildalton as they have loads of room .There will be no development on the Waterford or Carlow campus related to this .So in reality it's a small niche course based in south Kilkenny accredited by SETU it's good for SETU s reputation but we are not going to see a new veterinary building on the Crystal site

Look it's a positive development and will look good in the prospectus. But there are no plans for a STEM building on the crystal site or any other SETU building. The have twenty-seven acres and no money to develop anything there. SETU needs capital investment if it's to grow, the Cork Road campus is dilapidated and they have science labs at 100% capacity with practicals sometimes timetabled up to 8 or 9 o clock at night to fit everyone in. Nothing has built there in 15 years and the college has suffered from that lack of investment

My fear is this Veterinary course will be used by the government as a strawman to say they are serious about SETU and investing in it when it's just a tiny part of the real investment that needed. We have an engineering building that got planning in 2019 and now must go back to planning again because nothing has been done about it in the last 5 years. That shows how interested the government is in investing in the Waterford campus

100% agree. Vet willprobably have some modules on Cork Road and practicals etc in Piltown.The announcement is only a tiny portion of the SETU ask.

Delivery has been awful although Mr Cummins thinks everything is wonderful.

Yes, fair points, it just extremely hard not be cynical about any government announcement related to SETU in Waterford. We have heard so many promises (lies) and being burned so many times over the last 20 years with no real improvements. We need to see diggers on site and actual large capital investment on the Waterford campus but from the experience we have had up to now I am very doubtful that is going to happen.

would they be just assimilated into existing Life sciences campus on the WIT campus? In UCD they’re separate. Still it’s hard to see why it wouldn’t bring and necessitate new or upgraded facilities

Science Labs are at 100%+ capacity on the main campus with practical's being timetables into the evening and early morning to cope with demand .Hard to see how they can fit more courses in without some developemt

The minister of agriculture was on WLR this morning and he said the course will be ready for intake for September 2026.

Delighted to hear that.

How can they sort anything without capital investment? None since 2006 or so.

https://www.setu.ie/courses/llb-bachelor-of-laws-hons is the law degree, a great course. Alas, we will have to wait for another Govt to have a medicine degree.