Generations of students who went to Integrated schools grew up getting their education in drafty, leaky portable classrooms. This must end.  First & Deputy First Minister - Restore the funding. You made a promise. Keep it.

The issue of employment status has become particularly pressing with the recent launch of PWO's report, 'Workers in All, but Name, Pay, and Conditions' (find at: https://pwo.ie/our-policies/); and imminent publications the Irish Universities Association (IUA) and the final draft of the government's 'National Review of State Supports for PhD Researchers.' PhD researchers have none of the standard entitlements of employees such as PRSI, sick leave, maternity leave, the minimum wage, or the right to join a trade union. They earn less than subsistence wages in conditions of insecurity. The call for employee status has been made as a solution to these problems, bringing us in line with European best practice. Recently organisations such as IFUT, SIPTU, and the USI have all endorsed employee status. But the IUA and university administrators have voiced their opposition. We believe an issue as important as this should be debated openly and across the entire college community. The discussion should not be confined to boardrooms, and all should have the opportunity to hear both sides and express their opinion. That is why we call on the Provost to commit to organising a public debate on the issue that will be open to all students and staff.

The new bye-laws concerning the harbour of Skerries are being brought into effect of March 1st 2024 which effect the town of skerries and the use of the harbour and the surrounding "inner harbour" use by all persons and vessels. Local government and representatives have done nothing to support the concerned people of Skerries and stop the Fingal County Council from making new sets of rules which will introduce fines and call for people to be guilty of an offence by continuing their boating/vessel activities in the harbour and surround bay / "inner harbour" of Skerries. Your support to object to the county council heavy handed and authoritarian methods is required. Not only to cause resistance to the new bye-laws but to bring a stop to local authority and elected representatives to doing "whatever they want" when it comes to our town of Skerries with little to no consideration for the people of the town. The people who have voted for such representatives yet receiving no representation once the votes have been counted. When done to others for other issues that do not directly affect YOU, it is no big deal right? Until the day it does effect YOU. Then you will understand why a town must pull together and support each other. The bye-laws proposed do not follow any law of the land of Ireland and are being introduced by the county council to undermine the use of the harbour as we have all known it for generations to date. Your support in signing this petition is to take a stand and have your say or voice heard. It is one thing to join a protest or a march and it is another to know what is going on in your own local back yard and see how changes may not always be for the better of the majority. Again if the local "reps" wish to receive continued support for their careers then it is YOU and all of us together that can demand of them TRUE & PROPER representation. Do not allow local reps and Fingal county council to sweep things under the carpet or make swift changes to the town you have grown to love without having YOUR say. You will note that some of the bye-laws are supported by acts of law or Irish statute, while other new bye-laws are creating / being invented without the support of any established Irish law or statute. It is important to sign the petition for so many more reasons than can be typed into this box. The bye-laws below have been voted on in favour of by council members and approved to come in to effect March 1st 2024. Sign below to support the towns of Skerries, Balbriggan, Loughshinny & Rush. A copy of Harbour bye-laws can be found online

We, the students and alumni of UCC’s BSc International Development, are petitioning Cork University Business School (CUBS) to prevent our program from moving into Temporary Cessation on the path to Permanent Cessation. CUBS claims their decision to discontinue the course is due to low engagement numbers. However, we believe this is simply a result of poor advertisement and under-representation on behalf of CUBS. The BSc International Development (IntDev) degree provides an opportunity to learn and act on critical local and global issues such as sustainability, poverty, health, education, aid and development, rural development, food systems, and the Sustainable Development Goals. IntDev is the only undergraduate degree of its kind in Ireland and is indispensable now more than ever because of contemporary matters of pandemics, conflict, and the climate crisis. This course is vital and is the foundation for generations of citizen activists who approach change through various ideological lenses and opportunities. Help us save it for future generations! With its loss, not only are students affected, but also alumni, professors, and other organisations that are looking for people's knowledge and experience in International Development. As the only undergraduate of its kind in Ireland, without it, students will be forced to travel abroad for this education. The degree directly reinforces UCC’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals and CUBS’ promise to ‘shape the leaders for a sustainable future.’ CUBS is squandering UCC’s opportunity to become a pioneer for International Development and Aid, an ethos Ireland heavily prides itself on. We implore CUBS to reconsider their decision and encourage them to make a greater effort to promote the course to future leaders at home and abroad. With proper funding and advertisement, International Development has the potential to become one of the foremost degrees in the country and UCC a hub for Aid and Development, but only if we can keep it from being cut. Save BSc International Development!

Student nurses in Ireland are working 12 hour shifts 3 days a week and aren’t paid a cent. They’re paying for their transport to and from placement and their meals whilst working. They deserve to be compensated for the money they’re spending. They play an important role in our healthcare system and are the future of our care.

Out of a potential electorate of 500,000+, only short of 113,000 are registered to vote, and of that number only just short of 39,000 used their votes in the 2020 election. We don’t believe that this can possibly represent a true reflection of the NUI Constituency electorate’s needs and views in Seanad Éireann. Furthermore, a vast graduate body is excluded from voting and has no representation at all, including, among others all former and existing IT colleges, DCU and teacher colleges to name but a few. We ask eligible voters to download, print and post the form register to vote, available here: https://www.nui.ie/elections/seanad-register.asp To share our campaign material through their channels and to contact and encourage their Colleges and Public Representatives to pledge their support and raise awareness. We are calling on the relevant Colleges and Public Representatives to pledge their support by signing this pledge, by using their platform to raise awareness and increase voter engagement. We ask that by pledging your support you also pledge commitment to ongoing reform and enfranchisement , specifically through calling for voter registration to be moved online, and to move to include all third level institution graduates are extended the entitlement to vote for candidates and representation in Seanad Éireann.

In the past couple of years we have had a tough time with students who have entered secondary school , with missing months of school and not being able to get the education we needed and yes we had google classroom but what good is talking to a screen and being afraid to ask questions and so on. The leaving cert students from the past couple of years have had 10 essays to do in higher and lower Irish leaving cert exams and now they are trying to make the next set of leaving cert students do 20 essays .I think this is absolutely unacceptable as we as either third year , transitions year or fifth year students have not got the education we we’re supposed to. We missed out on two whole years of learning due to the coronavirus and I think it is unfair to change the amount now when they still have students in their schools who did not get their full education in secondary school, sure their are students who can definitely do it and most likely pass but the amount of students who’s attendances has dropped since 2020 is huge their have been 24.7m school days lost from 2019 September to 2022 summer. I think it is unfair to ask of us to do 20 essays and us not have a say and lose marks all because they don’t wanna be considerate of the students who didn’t get their full potential education in secondary school. Maybe in the next upcoming years when all is back to normal and anyone who went to secondary school during covid is out of school and done their leaving they can talk about bringing it in but I believe we have a voice too and we should be allowed to act against this because I as a transition year student can confidently say I am not prepared to do 20 full essays in Irish as I feel I could just about do 10 never mind 20 and I think it’s unfair to quite literally set us up to lose marks when these 20 essays could be the reason we lose the marks we need to go onto do what we wanna do in the future and miss out the opportunity to go to our dream college. Thank you for taking the time to read my petition and I really hope you consider signing it as it’s our only chance to make a change before our leaving cert.

*This description is extracted from a broader counter-statement endorsed by multiple societies against an email sent by Maynooth University, which can be read here https://publuu.com/flip-book/392331/889456 * I am a student/staff of Maynooth University and you do not have my support in your statement regarding the Israeli Apartheid of Palestine. It is disgraceful to email the community 3 days after the International Court of Justice's decision that there was a plausible case for Israel to answer and ordering it to take action to "prevent genocide". The fact of the matter is that choosing neutrality instead of taking a stance against Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is enabling a continued violation of human rights. Your statement was released within the minute following your call for submissions regarding Social Justice Week. It is deeply hypocritical to discuss the concept of peace but choose not to actively support the ceasefire in your position of influence. I compare your actions to Maynooth University's statement condemning the invasion of Ukraine only one day after Russian launched their military campaign. Thus, your statement is a clear demonstration of Maynooth University's endorsement of the current atrocities being committed by the Israeli government. over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled and over 6,000 Palestinians were killed as part of an ethnic cleansing decades before the 7th of October . To be pro-Palestinian is not ‘anti-Semitic’ but critical of Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism in pursuit of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. Indeed, such claim is an effort to silence teachings about the Palestine cause. This is not an equal-sided conflict but an anti-colonial war which an Irish university should viscerally understand the impact of. Since the 7th of October, all universities in Gaza have been annihilated and the Israeli-occupied West Bank is being illegally struck by drones. Moreover, since the 7th of October, over 25,000 Palestinian people have been murdered by Israel; thousand-year-old native olive trees of Bethlehem have been uprooted; and over 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced across the Gaza strip. In other words, the number of students and staff currently attending Maynooth has been killed twice. Do not misunderstand, I am appalled by the 7th of October attack. Yet, I also acknowledge that Hamas was financially supported by the Israeli military and politicians for years and mere months prior to the 7th of October to destabilise Palestinian democracy. The Israeli government has been creating propaganda targeting the Western audience to dismiss decades of the Palestinian genocide as a 'right to defend itself’ . Vice-President, your EDI office and the executives have failed to showcase the critical analysis about global humanitarian issues that this academic institution aims to foster in our students and Staff. Although your email claimed to portray the university as neutral, this is far from the truth due to the continuation of the university’s connection with companies profiting from this genocide, such as Starbucks and Intel, with the latter just recently donating a grant of €150,000 to the building of a new robotics lab on campus. Intel operates four development and production sites in Israel, including a manufacturing plant 42km from the Gaza strip. Amid the genocide, Intel announced its plan to expand the Kiryat gat plant, with Netanahu saying it was the largest investment ever in Israel, and the Israeli Finance minister stating “This investment, at a time when Israel wages war against utter wickedness, a war in which good must defeat evil, is an investment in the right and righteous values that spell progress for humanity,”. The university must divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, boycott products supporting Israel and pressure the Irish government to demand an internationally-enforced ceasefire now. As Desmond Tutu famously said ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice have chosen the side of the oppressor’.

All children can learn. All children have a right to an education and we need to stand up for some of the most vulnerable children in our community who are being denied an education.

It is not natural to put children into uniforms for all of their childhood. Be in no doubt that they sap some of the light and levity out of the child and out of the school. They introduce fear and conflict because they involve enforcement, punishments, reprimands, and alienation. Schools become that bit more hostile to many children. Teachers waste enormous amounts of time enforcing and harassing and haranguing students about the clothes they are wearing and very stupid things like the colour of their shoelaces. They are expensive, restrictive, uncomfortable, oppressive and outdated. They reflect a right-wing conservative need for ultra-conformity to control children. In France it is Le Pen's neo-Nazi's who want to introduce uniforms. They are counter to modern educational philosophy which values plurality, problem-solving, creativity and self-expression. Ireland and Malta are the only two EU countries with this widespread practice, both with a British colonial past and a widespread smothering conservative, Catholic control of schools. It is a myth that uniforms protect children from bullying. In the wider European continent, out of 40 countries, uniforms are the norm in eight, and all eight of those report above average levels of bullying (Statista 2018). Rather than trying to make everyone look the same (impossible anyhow) by enforcing ridiculous dress and appearance rules, better for school to focus on developing children's ability to be resilient, accept themselves and other people for who they are in all their wonderful human diversity.

The Killester Raheny Clontarf school planning area (KRC SPA) has seven secondary schools. All are taxpayer-funded and all are controlled by religious institutions. Five of the schools are single-sex. Of the remaining two schools, one prioritises children from Protestant backgrounds and the other is a small Catholic school. We have raised this issue repeatedly with the Minister for Education, Norma Foley, through representations in the Dáil. Through questions to her Department we have learned that there is a serious lack of secondary school places in the KRC SPA. The statistics we received from the Department of Education show, for example, that year after year between 60% and 70% of boys who finish sixth class in the KRC SPA leave the area for secondary school. This is unsurprising as only one of the single-sex schools mentioned above caters for boys. The schools in our area are already oversubscribed and the statistics show we need a new one. We need a school that offers parents a choice. Please sign the petition and let’s make sure it’s a non-religious school that boys and girls can attend together.

Young people across the UK and Ireland currently live in an electoral postcode lottery. 16 and 17 year olds in Scotland and Wales are allowed to vote in local and Parliamentary elections, while their peers in Northern Ireland cannot.  Scotland and Wales join a host of other nations across the world which have chosen to extend voting rights to their young citizens, including: • Austria • Brazil • Cuba • Ecuador • Parts of Germany • Greece • Malta • Nicaragua, and more! Young people living in Northern Ireland feel disenfranchised and unsupported by our political system. Lowering the voting age to 16 will give our young people a democratic voice, ensuring that their voices can be heard on the issues that matter to them.  Why now? Recent comments by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in support of votes at 16 have sparked some heated public debate on the issue. Many of the arguments put forward have been based on assumptions about young people's behaviour, maturity and competence. But we no longer need to rely on assumptions - we can look at the international evidence!  1. Young people are capable and engaged  - when faced with situations that require unhurried, deliberate consideration - 'cold cognition' - 16 year olds demonstrate judgement as mature as that of adults. In the weeks and months before an election, young people have time to use their cold cognition skills, gathering evidence and talking to their friends, family and peers before making an informed decision. 2.  Many young people are political activists and campaigners - globally and locally, 16 and 17 year olds have campaigned for climate action, better mental health services, RSE and much more. 3. Young people have minds of their own - it's true that in most European countries, young people tend to support left-leaning parties in higher numbers than adults. But just like adults, young people hold a range of views and opinions from across the political spectrum (see trends in Austria, Germany and Scotland) 4. Younger voters are lifelong voters - at age 18, many young people are in a transitional phase of life - leaving school, starting uni or work, moving out of the family home or their hometown. They might not be familiar with local issues and candidates, or with voting registration systems and requirements. These conditions can dampen rates of voter turnout. But at the ages of 16 and 17, young people are more likely to in environments with strong socialisation influences, like the family home and school. Evidence from Scotland shows that when they are given the right to vote, 16 and 17 year olds turn out in greater numbers than those aged 18 - 24! 5. Respect for fairness and equality - young people aren't just citizens of the future - they're full and equal citizens now! At the age of 16, young people in NI can work, pay taxes, provide care for loved ones, get married and serve in the Armed Forces. They're an active and valuable part of society - why shouldn't they have a say in how things are governed? The importance of education When 16 and 17 year olds are granted the right to vote in Northern Ireland, it is vital that this is accompanied by plans to develop high-quality civic education. Deliberative political literacy education can help to mitigate inequalities in political knowledge, confidence and participation from the earliest possible stages. Schools and youth organisations have a crucial role to play in empowering, supporting and encouraging young people to engage meaningfully with politics.  Credit for Image: Bulat Silvia