Across Ireland, students are struggling to adapt to online learning. Even those with decent broadband and working computers are reporting difficulty keeping up and paying attention. Pre-recorded lectures with little interaction leave lecturers seeming even less approachable than before, courses which previously had time allocated to practical sessions now have significantly less or none at all. All of this, on top of the loneliness that students are facing as they remain isolated from their peers, has resulted in a massive decline in the quality of our education. We are left feeling like we are paying for the opportunity to teach ourselves. This is unacceptable. All this when the Republic of Ireland has the highest student contribution fee in the EU, with our peers in the North paying even more. The current measures that have been taken by the government to aid this situation, the free laptop scheme and €250 refund, are welcome but simply not enough. Students who paid for accommodation, only to learn that all their classes would online, deserve better. Students who are teaching themselves and feel as if they’re attending “YouTube University” deserve better. Students without strong broadband who are forced to rely on mobile data deserve better. Many of the facilities that our fees are supposed to be paying for are closed, while we still pay the same amount as last year. We demand a full refund of fees this year, and that the Department of Further and Higher Education begin to seriously consider the abolition of tuition fees. Education is a human right, and it’s high time it is treated as such. After signing this petition please share your online learning story with #WhatAmIPayingFor, and don’t forget to tag Simon Harris, Micheál Martin, the Department of Further and Higher Education and your local TDs! After you've done that, we encourage you to join catuireland.org, a tenant & community action union that's taking on landlords who are taking the piss. Finally, we're organising an open Zoom meeting to discuss further campaigns, actions and occupations that can take place to fight for our fees. Join us on the 3rd of December at 6 pm here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUvceCorz4rGdcVB0A01oKRAGT6wtOte2Hj

You, the Department of Education have a duty of care for the safety & protection of our children & school staff. Parents and school staff were promised “protection measures” yet none are in place. Now at level 5, there are still no safety measures and schools are reporting that when a positive case is in a classroom, they are unable to get hold of HSE and have no guidance only to get on with it and continue with positive cases within the class. NOT ACCEPTABLE.

Keep our kids safe, keep ourselves safe so we can keep our Ireland safe!!!

We need public representatives who lead by example, particularly in these difficult times. It is unacceptable that there is one rule for them and another for the general public. It's not like it was an essential event either.

On foot of huge sacrifices made these last 3 months by persons of all ages and circumstances, it would be criminally irresponsible to allow the thirst for tourism income and personal holiday travel to issue in a second wave.

To preserve the gains and prevent a second wave.

Children's Mental Health & Well being is being impacted by the failure of the Department of Education and Skills to ensure adequate places are available. This is a situation which will continue to get worse over the coming years

Single use plastics are damaging to the environment, non-recyclable and are a by product of the oil industry. With rocketing co2 levels and extreme weather events now a reality, we need to divest.

It’s with alarming concert that we the community of killaloe & Ballina hear that the local weekly citizens advice service had been suspended due to unforeseen circumstances. The community of killaloe & Ballina have a population of over 4,500 residents and the service had been in situ for well over 10 years providing free information advice support and Advocacy. We the community of Killaloe & Ballina value that weekly citizens information (CIC) service and wish to emphasise the importance of it, in supporting and addressing our complex queries. We have sign this petition to highlight the importance of keeping this service open in Killaloe to meet the needs of our community and to especially provide a face to face service to those that are marginalised and unable to get to Limerick or Nenagh Citizens information centers offices.

It's important because Ireland as a country and a people have a reputation of been caring towards animals a reputation that the RTE investigates programme seriously questions. Secondly because the irish taxpayer is giving this industry 16.5million euro every year which equates to a quarter of a billion since the early 2000's and as such the animals in question deserve proper treatment and care and if the bodies who control the sport don't want to then the taxpayer who funds it should hold them to account. Thirdly because precedent has been set Sports Ireland withdrew 3 million of funding from FAI over strange financial practices and a loan from its CEO to the organisation yet the Irish Greyhound Board gets 16.5 million to allow the practices highlighted in Wednesday RTE Investigates programme which for me it just as bad if not worse than what FAI were doing

Because we, Irish people, are getting a bad deal. We will get better results from a new system of government. We need TRANSPARANCY, ACCOUNTABILITY and RESPONSIBILITY from politicians who should be limited to serving ONE term in office. The current system permits/encourages poor decisions by politicians. A truly TRANSPARENT system will attract and deliver honest politics from honest politicians ... and will not appeal to others.

The demand mental health services is ever increasing, while this government continues to reduce the service. We must demand that all mental health services be fully staffed and resourced so they can to begin to reduce waiting lists while meeting future demand.