Derry and Coleraine are under attack, we need to join forces – Richard Sterling

RICHARD STERLING, former President of the Londonderry Chamber of Commerce and driving force behind the Group 22 lobby campaign which convinced Stormont to extend the Scotland-Ireland gas interconnector to the North West, urges Derry and Coleraine to team up in the face of UU's cutbacks.

The downsizing currently being planned at Ulster University is a travesty and a disgrace.  

The career path I followed avoided university but was one in which I developed real grit for the challenges I was to face in my working life. But I have learned the foundational importance of a university to the social and economic fabric of any community. Grit is what is needed today to face down this abomination. Not protest. 

Once again, areas outside of Belfast have been dealt a massive blow, with the recent announcement from the ‘powers that be’ that there will be staff cutbacks at both Magee (Derry) and Coleraine campuses. If followed through, this will be devastating for both communities. 

In 1965, when Derry and Coleraine were in fierce competition, each striving to secure the ‘New University’ - our second major university after Queens - Coleraine won a pyrrhic victory.  A ‘town and gown’ partnership slowly developed there, yet continues unabated. Now, those efforts will be significantly damaged. Magee battled on, with plans today for major university expansion. But now?

We are all left to imagine in the subsequent decades since 1965 how things for Derry might have been different if the huge socio-economic uplift which a major head-quartered university can bring had been delivered to Derry. Now, with an axe being swung, the city faces potential serious regression. 

This time Derry and Coleraine are not in competition. Each being attacked. They need to join forces. 

I can claim some knowledge and experience of identifying, challenging, and rectifying an important area of social and economic disparity. Separate subject - natural gas.

Whatever the arguments today for and against, natural gas as a fossil fuel is a much cleaner and more efficient means to create electricity and to heat homes and businesses than the environmentally dirtier alternatives of oil and coal. 

I recall former Secretary of State Richard Needham writing that, when flying in from Brussels in the mid 1980’s, ‘Belfast was the only city in the UK where the city was hidden under a layer of smog’ - so it’s not as if clean-up wasn’t needed. 

In 1992, when the electricity industry was sold off to private interests, it was never a stated objective to clean up our environment through the widespread availability of natural gas, and reduce the cost of electricity to the consumer by recognising the symbiotic relationship between electricity and the almost environmentally benign natural gas, creating a powerful win-win combination. The ‘powers that be’ never saw it. 

When natural gas did arrive at Larne from Scotland in 1996 - it was decided by those ‘powers that be’ that this new energy source should be the sole preserve of The Greater Belfast Area - with absolutely no notion of expansion beyond, or of developing a gas fuelled power station outside that cherished territory. No rationale could be found by the civil servants to expand gas to the north and north west, and certainly no means to see a new gas fired power station which could underpin the economics of such expansion, and cut the cost of generating electricity significantly through the use of cleaner and more efficient technologies. The win-win.

Both Coleraine and Derry were losing out - along with Ballymena and many other towns outside Belfast denied access to natural gas  

It was only through the emergence of Group 22 in 1998 - a cross sector lobby group - that the serious wrongs of this were highlighted. 

The North-West had no gas infrastructure at all, and it was the intention of the Belfast based civil servants to keep it that way. Group 22 challenged strongly, but they did much more. They carried out detailed analysis highlighting the social, economic and environmental cost to the region of NOT having access to this new energy source. Powerful arguments, but which the civil servants refused to accept.

The Energy Regulator at the time was a powerful voice within the industry. He too could see the inequity and the significant benefits which natural gas could bring to a region which constantly dragged behind the north east. He ‘got it’.

Yet it took two brave Ministers who absolutely ‘got it’ - Empey (Unionist) and Durkan (Nationalist) - to overrule the advice from the civil servants, and with support from the Republic, offer a funding package for the development of a north west gas pipeline. This also allowed the replacement of the retiring oil fired Coolkeeragh Power Station with a new state-of-the-art gas fired station. Combined, an investment of c.£300 million. 

With the widespread availability of natural gas throughout Derry City, Coleraine, Limavady, Portstewart and many other towns, this region today enjoys a cleaner environment, fuel choice and economic enhancement. It is estimated that the new Coolkeeragh alone contributes some £7 million to the local economy annually.

None of this could have happened without Group 22. Empowerment of a community and their actions brought about policy change.

My point in writing this is that Derry and Coleraine again face a major socio economic challenge. These campus job losses will bring devastating and largely unforeseen consequences far into the future. 

I had the privilege of being the driving force behind Group 22. The years are now against me to repeat the experience, but in the words of several leading politicos at the time it was the best organised lobby group they had ever seen.  

Strong leadership and cogent argument from the cross sectoral and cross border Group 22 - industry, Councils, trade unions, Chambers of Commerce, politicians, community groups - created a singular voice which we made sure was heard. Some words come to mind - preparation, trust, respect, commitment, integrity, courage, partnership, and not least serious determination. 

It’s imperative that Derry and Coleraine - led by their Councils and Chambers of Commerce - quickly find shared leadership, and rise up with a common voice. They must convince the politicians at Stormont and Westminster with detailed arguments and analyses that this is wrong and will have devastating long term consequences for an important sub region on this island, before its too late.