Our wonderful Minister for Education Of Everybody Outside the South East, that's Mary Hanafin, has decided "clear criteria for university designation would have to be established before the WIT application could be addressed in any detail.". The Irish Times report can be found here
I'm glad she's decided clear criteria should be put in place, that will waste another year or so as did the Port Report and Professor Farquhar's report. Funny thing is that when you read the port report it creates some reasonable evaluation criteria of its own and essentially endorses WIT's claim for University status. Indeed Dr. Port appears apologetic for having to craft a report in the absense of the "clear criteria" that he foresees as a governmental imperative to make the decision. Professional timewasting rather than the amateur kind. Despite the endorsement from Dr. Port that we have the facilities, strategy and administration to be upgraded It's nice to know that Ministers for Education need to carefully consider anything which may benefit the South East when they can unilaterally upgrade all RTC's to IT's without any evaluation criteria clearer than appeasing voters. So long as they're not in the South East...
Yet out regional need is overlooked and the process is being drawn out unnecessarily. From a time of optimistic prosperity to our current sober economic climate. If the delaying tactics continue much longer the Dept of Education will suggest with some reasonableness they can't afford it. It's a question of priorities of course but suffice to say that Mary is one minister I'd like to see reshuffled.