RTE is the national broadcaster and it should live up to its responsibilities as a neutral actor and not show favor towards particular political parties.

You can do your bit to get candidates to endorse the charter by emailing them and sending them to the link to the online petition containing the charter and 19-point reform programme. Tell them why signing the charter is important to you. Make sure to tell the candidates to include their party/affiliation when they sign the charter. SWAN supporters are also asked to support the principles in the charter by using the hashtag #SWs4Change in #GE2020 and signing up to the charter. If a candidate comes to your door canvassing hand them a hardcopy of the charter (downloadable pdf on our wordpress blog, link below) and ask them to sign up to it. Tweet us a picture of the signed charter using the hashtag #SWs4Change. Thanks for doing your bit for social justice ahead of #GE2020. Let us know how you get on and who signs the charter by tweeting us @SWAN_IRL and using the hashtag #SWs4Change.

Students here pay around £4000 per year to attend university. These fees are a barrier to students from working class backgrounds and financial issues are a major cause of student distress and anxiety. The burden of balancing the books of the new NI Assembly should not be placed on our young people. Education is a right and should not be a commodity.

Our schools are facing overwhelming challenges in the provision of education for our children with special needs. The campaign for The Right Inclusion Model for Every Child calls for the State to provide for the rights of every child to an education. To respect the rights of all of our children, sufficient resources must be provided to those who have special educational needs. The Proclamation of our Republic promises to ‘cherish all the children of the nation equally’. Under the current model, inadequate resourcing means that children with additional needs are not guaranteed their right to equal access to education. The goal of our campaign is to achieve cross-party support for The Right Inclusion Model for Every Child ahead of the General Election and to have the principles of this model included on the next Programme for Government. We assert that The Right Inclusion Model for Every Child must include; • SNA allocation to match the needs of the children • Transparency in the Process: There are currently not enough SNAs in the system to match the needs and the appeals process is not fit for purpose. The proposed General Allocation Model cannot match the needs going forward, given that current needs are not being met. Meaningful consultation with schools, parents and children’s advocacy groups is necessary to inform the right inclusion model. • Multi-Disciplinary teams: Immediate removal of waiting lists for Assessment of Need to ensure timely, appropriate access to multi-disciplinary services. This will require considerable increases in staffing and resourcing of the various services. • Options for children and their families: To have options of placements in mainstream schools, special classes within mainstream schools, and special schools according to each child’s needs. We are asking for every General Election Candidate to sign up to our campaign and to pledge to deliver The Right Inclusion Model for Every Child as a matter of priority in the next government.

The climate crisis is entirely different from all other issues in this general election campaign. It is global in scope, raising genuine existential risk for the stability of all human civilisation within the lifetime of young people already of voting age. It transcends and dwarfs the other issues: there can be no enduring solution to housing, healthcare, education, economic development, peace or justice unless there is a successful response to the climate crisis. For Ireland to now play even its minimal fair share in such a global response would require fundamental and disruptive changes in current political priorities. It is utterly impossible to do justice to this issue without a full debate devoted exclusively to it, and driven by an audience selected explicitly to represent future generations who are entirely reliant on the decisions being made now. "We need to focus every inch of our being on climate change. Because if we fail to do so, then all of our achievements and progress will be for nothing. And all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history. And they will be remembered as the greatest villains of all time because they have chosen not to listen and not to act." - Greta Thunberg, speech to the European Economic and Social Committee, February 2019. [Note: This is now a joint/merged petition based on two similar but independent initiatives. The first was created by Nikki Ffrench Davis, the second by Barry McMullin.] [Image credit: sculpture by Isaac Cordal, "Follow the leaders," Berlin, Germany, April 2011.]

After the apalling news that the Dublin Region Homeless Executive injured a man sleeping in a tent, I'm calling on the Council and Waterways Ireland to stop removing people and tents at all. [1] People are just trying to take shelter in whatever way they can and literally using machinery to move them on is not fine and in this case led to serious and life-changing consquences. The right services need to be provided for people experiencing homelessness, but I don't think we should move on people from where they have chosen to take shelter. They are not bothering anyone by being there. [1] https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/0115/1107513-dublin-homeless/

To many people are dying due to suicide there's not enough awareness or places to go where people listen to your problems I know first had as I lost my dad Christmas last year he took his own life there was no one around to listen to him which lead to suicide

With some schools with over 1,000 pupils this would seriously reduce the amount of plastic that is produced alco children spend almost 7 hours 5 days a week at school so if you make that time plastic free we'll....

We need a safe place for our children and adults to cycle on the road for commuting to school and work. This would also provide for recreational cycling and people to enjoy the coast in a safe and peaceful manner. At the moment there is no continuous safe cycling for people in DLR. Most people currently don't cycle due to the dangerous nature of the roads in DLR. This could provide an impetus for cycling with a link all the way from Booterstown to Sandycove. There's been talk of a cycleway along the coast for over 20 years and still no sign of it.

-Reduce commuter traffic. -Reduce toxic fumes. -Reduce commuter time. -Get exercise. -Reduce cost of commute. -Safety, country roads are too dangerous to cycle.

I am committed to being part of the Irish Left, and helping this country to move more to the left. As part of this, I have had the privilege of attending the "School Strikes for the Climate," to support Ireland's young climate activists. These children and teenagers have shown themselves to care more passionately about fixing the climate crisis than many of Ireland's adults. In 2015, we had the same-sex marriage referendum. We saw that year how many of our young people really care about making our country a more equal and fair place. Our teenagers have things to say, so I strongly believe we should let them have their say. It is time for us to lower the minimum voting age in elections and referendums to sixteen. To do so would not only make Ireland a more equal country, but it would help to bring fresh input and ideas into the national conversation. So please sign this petition to Leinster House and share it with others. Thank you.

It ensures the safety of sex workers. As a result of the March 2017 bill, which criminalised clients and allowed sex work to be legal, as long as they worked alone, the violence against sex workers has increased by 90%. If sex work was decriminalised, they could work together to avoid threats to their safety and protect each other from clients that could commit robbery, assault, or rape, as clients are aware of how the law could work in their favour.