Sir, – The article by Carl O'Brien (News, November 2nd) outlines the significant benefits which are expected to flow to the southeast region following the merger of IT Carlow and Waterford IT to create a new technological university (TU).
Yet in the northeast of the country, the Institute of Technology in Dundalk now stands alone as the only regional institute of technology excluded from the current wave of TU designations.
Despite its unique position on the Dublin-Belfast corridor and the critical importance of the institute in an expanding industrial region, it seems that it has been cruelly neglected.
Your education editor rightly highlights the advantage of a locally-sourced university qualification. This is now denied to students in the northeast region which has been disadvantaged by those who precipitated this failure.
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Was the problem in the Higher Education Authority, the Department for Further and Higher Education, or in the board and management of the college itself? Have local politicians anything to say about their efforts over the last number of years to promote the inclusion of Dundalk IT in the process?
No blame attaches to the staff of the institute who have continually tried to persuade the management to become actively involved in the TU project.
I would like to see some grown-up assessment of this monumental failure.
– Yours, etc,
SEAMUS GRANT,
Ballinteer, Dublin 16.