Council demands guarantee City Deal money will be spent in Derry

A motion to that effect was passed at the June full council meeting, however, a proposal by Aontú Councillor Anne McCloskey, that Council oppose the release of any City Deal funding to Ulster University, was not put.

Colr. McCloskey originally tabled a motion calling for money to be withheld from Ulster University and that, ‘following Stormont’s loan to UU for expansion in its North Belfast Campus’, the Council call for ‘similar financial support [to] be made available to any new institutions in Derry’.

She said: “Now we have on the horizon this City Deal which is the first significant pot of money that is coming from Central Government, Westminster and from the Stormont Executive, specifically earmarked for the needs of this town.”

She added: “We now know that about 40 per cent of that total pot of money is going to come under the control of Ulster University.

“The Graduate Entry Medical School is the flagship project and it was first mooted in 2003 and we are not getting delivery even in 2021. Mrs. O’Neill announced in May that it was going ahead and then the First Minister Arlene Foster said the risks have to be examined. So we’ve been examining risk now for two decades and it looks as if the delivery of this is not going to happen.”

Colr. McCloskey’s motion was amended by both SDLP Councillor Martin Reilly and Sinn Féin Councillor Mickey Cooper. Colr. Reilly removed the demand that the Council oppose any City Deal money being released to UU.

He added a clause that recognised that the “proposed City Deal funding to Ulster University is central to the NI Graduate Entry Medical School and other job generating research projects such as the Centre for Industrial Digitalisation, Robotics and Automation (CIDRA) and the Cognitive Analytics Research Lab (CARL).”

Colr. Cooper added a further clause to the motion to call on the “British Government and UU to guarantee that any projects developed by the UU though City Deal funding will be based permanently in Derry,” and for the “Stormont Executive and Dublin Government to clearly commit to funding ring-fenced additional Maximum Student Numbers (MaSN) places for the Magee Campus to maximise opportunities for expansion”.

Colr. Reilly said he wanted CIDRA and CARL included in the motion because those UU projects had the potential to boost jobs in Derry and were reliant on City Deal funding.

“The reason why we wanted that in was because City Deal is not just university expansion in terms of student numbers.

“Obviously that’s a very big part of it and the GEMS is the first step, albeit a small step in that direction in investing and attracting well-paid jobs to our city region,” he said.

Colr Cooper said: “In terms of the City Deal monies, part of those monies are for the Medical School. That’s a key element. The Medical School is under UU’s remit as we speak. There’s no other institution that’s come forward to offer the medical school.”

The amended motion, when put to a vote, passed with 30 votes for, one against and no abstentions.

Colr. McCloskey, who brought the original motion, voted against the amended version due to the removal of the demand that City Deal money be withheld from UU.