Letter: ​Irish government's cash announcement for Magee campus shows Dublin’s contempt for unionism

Since the express/implied “signing” of the New Approach New Decade deal of January 2020 by the UUP and DUP, I have been writing to all shades of unionism to warn of the danger of the creation of the first all-Ireland university campus at Magee.

Building upon the 2000 investment of £70m capital from Dublin to Magee and the most recent cash investment (Magee set for Irish government funding, News Letter, June 21) from Dublin into a Ulster University (UU) campus where, in my opinion, there is such an under representation of Protestant/unionist academics, researchers and students that there should be a major investigation into the reasons for it, such as possible discrimination, the stage is set for the separation of Magee from UU, the diminution of Coleraine and the “medical” schools at Coleraine as they are transferred to Magee, and the alignment of the UU's remaining Belfast campus with QUB to create the University of the North of Ireland.

As for the much-awaited Castlereagh Foundation and the Ulster-Scots research institute, the minutiae of the crumbs promised under the New Decade deal provides only insult to injury!

That Dublin can so readily invest in the enlargement of a university campus that so clearly marginalises the unionist/Protestant population simply demonstrates the contempt Dublin has for the minority unionist population. That the British government and Northern Ireland Office can let Dublin invest in this university campus, along with numerous other major NI infrastructure networks, is simply another British compromise to the overt process of incremental Irish unification. Sad to say, the involvement of Dublin with the Magee campus has been welcomed over the last three years within several public statements by DUP representatives in the North West!

Dr Edward Cooke, Mallusk