Derry must move now to establish its own cross-border university

By Conal McFeely, Derry University Group

The Belfast Telegraph's North West Correspondent, Garrett Hargan, was given a civic award in October 2024 by Mayor Lilian Seenoi-Barr following the publication of his history of the Derry university saga, A Scandal in Plain Sight. (Pic: Martin McKeown)

For more than 60 years Stormont, under the guise of its university, NUU/University of Ulster/Ulster University, has deliberately restricted Derry’s growth - and it is continuing to do so today. 

This is not a matter of opinion - this is a matter of hard fact. Those in need of comprehensive data and evidence need look no further than Garrett Hargan’s superlative, and aptly-titled, investigative history of UU, A Scandal in Plain Sight. 

Almost a decade ago, in the wake of Brexit, it rapidly became apparent that there could be major opportunities and benefits for Derry as the only major city abounding both the EU and the ‘UK’. 

Talk was rife of free ports being opened and us becoming the new Hong Kong.

In the immediate aftermath of Brexit, the Derry University Group met with the Irish government and proposed that an independent cross-border university could become the cornerstone for regenerating this most disadvantaged region of the island. The new institution, we argued, would also stand as a permanent monument to future good faith between Britain and Ireland - serving as a bridge, not a border. And before long, it became clear that the Irish government was listening.

In  2021, the Oireachtas, through its educational leaders in the Royal Irish Academy, formally proposed a new North West University, stretching from Coleraine to Sligo, with Derry as its main hub. Dublin then sponsored a specialised RIA taskforce to produce a more detailed blueprint as to how this could work.

The following year, following a meeting with the Derry University Group, the London government also included the proposal for a Derry-centred cross-border university in its first command paper on Legacy.

Then in 2024, the Irish followed up with its in-depth roadmap paper on a North West University from the RIA, which was consolidated by Dublin’s offer of £40m for a new university teaching block for Derry.

Conal McFeely (r) and Kevin Hippsley of the Derry University Group at the 2022 unveiling of a 55-foot long mural calling for action on the university.

Ulster University and Stormont, however, have relentlessly opposed the move to give Derry any autonomy at every level from the outset - culminating in an extraordinary performance at the NI Select Affairs Committee in Westminster last month, when the clearly-rattled UU Vice Chancellor attempted to dismiss the two RIA papers as some sort of unsanctioned pipe dreams.

That, however, was the very same day that Queen’s University and Dundalk IT announced a new partnership to open the island’s first cross-border university - on that model first mooted by the Derry University Group and blueprinted by the RIA. 

So UU, yet again, was exposed for what it has been for sixty years - an institution that puts Belfast’s interests first and holds Derry back.

The border town of Dundalk - a town less than half the size of Derry - has been struggling for a a long time to acquire university status for its IT campus, which is roughly the same size as Magee. But the cross-border masterstroke only came into being in the last few months. This time last year, it was being suggested Dundalk would attempt to join the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) - which would not have made sense geographically, as it is more than 120 miles from any of the campuses. And the Queens partnership, as roadtested by the RIA, made a lot more sense and was developed in a matter of months - not years.

Foyle MP Colum Eastwood has raised the case for an independent cross-border university with the Irish government - and has backed a universities Oversight Commission for the North as recommended by the Royal Irish Academy.

Derry is so ready to move forward - independent from the restraints of UU, its anti-North West bias and its crippling debt. UU, remember, has repeatedly refused to invest any of its own resources into Derry - leading to a chronic physical infrastructure shortfall and an accommodation crisis. Its failure to allocate courses in any fair or accountable way, has, for generations, led to our city fighting for scraps with our equally-neglected neighbours in Coleraine, while Belfast (formerly Jordanstown) fills its boots. 

We have the support from Dublin (though incredibly UU wasn’t able to find any spare change in the £40m grant it was allowed to administer to erect bilingual signage – as is now the law here), we have the student numbers to make an autonomous NW viable, and the blueprint, as devised by the academy is waiting.

The Department of the Economy, which supervises Higher Education, is promising an all-encompassing review of the sector. And we will be demanding some genuine game-changers in the form of new all-Ireland HE structures and the introduction of a HE Regulator, which would both scrutinise the North’s university sector and also oversee the dissolution of UU into its component parts. 

We will also be calling on Derry, Donegal, Sligo and Coleraine to develop a regional economic/educational partnership to deliver the RIA’s NWU vision, in tandem with sponsors such as the Dublin government and others.

This needs to happen immediately. Dundalk went from bit player to being a partner in the island’s first cross-border university in a matter of months. 

Dundalk and Queen’s have shown what can be done when the civic and political will is there. And done quickly.

Derry’s urgency is even greater. It is time for the political and civic elite - and for the Executive and Derry/Strabane Council - to decide what side they’re on. 

The campaign for an independent university was established by John Hume (r) more than sixty years ago. The Nobel Laureate is pictured here with Nationalist MP Eddie McAteer (l) and Derry's unionist mayor Albert Anderson on the steps of Stormont after 25000 people took part in a cavalcade from Derry in February 1965.