SDLP Foyle MLA Sinead McLaughlin
Minister Dodds was responding to an Assembly question from McLaughlin, asking the minister to confirm her support for the commitment to Magee campus expanding to 10,000 students in the New Decade, New Approach agreement.
Said the Foyle MLA: “New Decade, New Approach was the agreement that enabled Stormont to get back into operation a year ago.
“It contained a specific commitment to the Magee expansion, which was inserted at the insistence of the SDLP.
“I am appalled at the failure of minister Dodds to confirm her support for this.
“But I am sadly not surprised, as it is consistent with other recent comments from the minister.
“It is essential that ministers adopt policies and programmes that enable commitments in NDNA to be implemented.”
Ms McLaughlin meanwhile welcomed the Pivotal think-tank’s report proposing an expansion of higher education provision, which was positive of the Magee expansion.
“The Pivotal report confirmed what the SDLP has been saying repeatedly for decades – that it is essential that the number of university places in Northern Ireland is increased substantially,” she said.
“We have a brain drain which damages the economy, deprives our society of people who would make our society a better place and which separates families.
“What is more, we need those extra student places in Derry, where we have a much smaller proportion of university students to the rest of the population than other cities across Ireland.
“A big increase in student population in Derry would be the basis for the positive transformation of our city that all of Derry wants.”
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