Derry University Group: The two governments must team up to deliver the NWU

What we need now is political will, financial support and delivery. This month marks 60 years since Derry was first denied its university, by the Lockwood Report. What is rarely pointed out is that this was not a one-off refusal but an ongoing one.

Since John Hume chaired the first University for Derry campaign in the 1960s, countless exciting plans and well-meaning taskforces have been put together with great fanfare, before being either killed off or allowed to die.

Books and dozens of academic papers have been written - from Frank Curran’s Derry: Countdown to Disaster (1986) to Garrett Hargan’s A Scandal in Plain Sight (2024).

The vast majority conclude, as most recently echoed by the RIA, that the NW must have its own independent university if we are to regenerate this most disadvantaged area of these islands. Stormont cannot deliver this project on its own.

It has no money left, having overspent in Belfast, so will require the financial, structural and political support of Dublin and London. We are also mindful that the Stormont ministry responsible, the Department of the Economy, has a long tradition of Belfast-centrism.

Going forward, particularly when partnering with London and Dublin, DEcon will have to allow and ensure independent oversight of the North’s university sector.

Moreover, UU’s massive debt - it currently owes £160m to the Strategic Investment Board and has substantial liabilities elsewhere - means it will have grave difficulty accessing any new credit lines.

In short, delivery for the NW cannot and will not be led from DEcon or UU. More optimistically, the British government indicated in a 2021 Command Paper that it will support a cross-border university partnership with Dublin and, by extension the EU, with which it is keen to restore relations. The Irish government has gone even further by investing €45m capital in Magee in 2023 and promising more.

It is essential now that these two governments co-ordinate, structure and formalise their support for both the NWU and the NW region.

And it is essential they do this immediately and start delivering towards the completion date of 2030, as committed to by them both in their 2020 agreement, New Decade New Approach.

The NW can wait no longer. Lockwood and his many imitators have inflicted deliberate generational damage on our region. Sixty years on, it is staggering this issue is still not resolved.

RESPONSE

UU stated: “It is not the role of UU to respond to statements from DUG. For our part we are actively engaged in actual growth of our campus and, with our partners, so delivering for Derry~Londonderry.”

DfE replied: “The 2020 NDNA document committed to the ‘expansion of the UU campus at Magee College’ to 10,000 students.

"This target has also been included in the Executive’s draft Programme for Government. The Magee Taskforce has published a comprehensive and costed plan to reach 10,000 students by 2032. This is the quickest and surest route to expansion.”