In an interesting move today, the government announced that it was to allocate Eur 50 million towards helping start-up companies in the Institute of Technology sector. Good news for those companies. However, the cynical mindset would be wise to suggest that this is no coincidence given last week’s release of the Port report on the re-designation of WIT to a university for the Southeast. One of the well-known arguments for a university is that it will attract additional investment into the region and help start-up businesses to grow. There is a growing opinion that failing to re-designate a university for the Southeast may well cost the government more in the long run and today we can see that it has already cost Eur 50 million towards supporting start-ups in the IoT sector that would definitely benefit anyway from a university that would cost far less to establish. The case for a university is still very much on the table and token gestures such as this should not be allowed to cloud that drive for a much needed facility in the Southeast. Furthermore, any move by the government to suggest that a re-designation of an IT to a university would adversely affect future funding of this nature would simply be playing very dirty and would be completely unacceptable behaviour. source: Breaking News