Foyle MP Colum Eastwood tells Oireachtas committee Derry is being held back without a full-scale university

Mr. Eastwood said the decision more than fifty years ago to snub Derry as the location for a second university in the north had had profound knock-on effects for the local economy.

He made the remarks at a recent briefing of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

“Derry and Inishowen in particular have been absolutely starved of investment in higher education. It is a scandal that the decision was made in 1965, which we all know about, and it has not really been rectified yet.

“It is disappointing that we have more commitment from the Dublin Government than from the Stormont Government. The many promises over many years to the people of Derry in particular about having a full-scale operational university based in Derry have not been delivered, and that is the reality.

“This has had a huge impact in terms of our ability to create employment and create an economy in the north west of Ireland,” he said.

The Foyle MP welcomed progress on the Magee medical school and the Cognitive Analytics Research Laboratory (CARL), Centre for Industry Digitalisation, Robotics and Automation (CIDRA) and Innovation Centres of Excellence - Personalised Medicine Centre of Excellence (THRIVE) projects but insisted: “There needs to be a full-scale university in Derry. We need to stop hundreds of young people leaving the city every year and never coming back. Emigration is still a real problem where I come from and it needs to be resolved.”