'Time for a reality check' - Derry University Group

A series of billboards have been erected at strategic sites across the city by the Derry University Group (DUG) to highlight what it described as the “socio-economic collapse of the region over the last 25 years and more”.

Speaking to Derry Now, DUG spokesperson, Conal McFeely said it was time for a critical reality check after the past month of back-slapping marking the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr McFeely added: “The hoardings, which show how Derry has continued to decline while Belfast prospers, will challenge people to open their eyes and demand equity for the North West.

Derry University Group chairperson, Conal McFeely, at the group's billboard at Free Derry Corner.

“Last week’s disastrous budget shows us further austerity, cuts and job losses are coming, and coming rapidly.

“The North West economy has already shrunk to the point that it is unsustainable. The community and voluntary sector, which provides wide-ranging vital services for the people of the North West, faces punitive cuts to already badly-stretched funding.

“The socio-economic infrastructure here cannot sustain any further hits. This is in contrast with other towns and cities around the island which, despite the current global downturn, are booming and growing,” said Conal McFeely.

Mr McFeely also posed the question, ‘Why is Derry’s population set to decline, while the likes of Galway is growing so rapidly?’

“Galway is going to surpass Derry in size within twenty years,” he said. “What is happening to Derry is wholly inequitable and amounts to targeted disadvantage, and we need to be challenging it at every possible turn and in every possible forum.”
DUG said “radical changes to current economic development strategies must be implemented to benefit both sides of the border in the ‘impoverished’ North West”.

“Read the statistics on the boards,” said Mr McFeely. “Why is a worker in Derry paid half the wages they could get in Belfast?

“People need to ask these types of questions to those in power at all levels, and everyone who needs our consent to govern us.

“Inappropriate and ineffective governance multiplies when people stop asking hard questions and fail to hold those in authority to basic standards of equity and fairness,” he said.

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Front Page - April 6, 2023

This is the second year DUG has installed billboards to highlight these issues.

Last year in the run up to the Assembly elections, the group installed a 55-foot hoarding on Strand Road.

In an interview with this paper last month, the group said the North West needed to seize the current opportunities open to the border regions in Ireland, pointing out that Derry is the only major city on the island with unfettered access to both the EU and the UK.

DUG stated: ‘We need a greater focus on developing our own indigenous economy and we start by building our own university as a fulcrum of our new North West society, a university we must run ourselves, independent of Belfast, to service the needs of our community and help this city restore its voice and plan its future.”