A TRAINEE primary school teacher, a legal executive from Tipperary and a GAA referee were among the several hundred attendees at the Fianna Fáil National Youth Conference held in Cork over the weekend.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin was attending his first Ógra conference as party leader. In a booklet handed out during the two-day event he described the past year as being “the most difficult” in the history of the party.
He told the young people gathered that it was “ironic” the Government was accepting praise from our EU partners for implementing the budget both Fine Gael and Labour trenchantly opposed, voted against and campaigned against in February.
He said the party plans to rebuild trust within the organisation by listening to its members.
“We have to be a party that is open to new ideas and new thinking so we can best respond to the challenges of an ever changing Ireland. I want to lead a party where every member is valued equally and every member can make their own distinct contribution to what Fianna Fáil stands for.”
The morning session on Saturday involved a panel debate on driving Ireland’s job creation. The afternoon session titled “Is education delivering opportunity?” featured contributions from Senator Averil Power, Brendan Smith TD, Irish Times columnist Brian Mooney and Clive Byrne, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals.
Trinity College student David Kelleher expressed his concern to the panel about the ongoing trend of Irish universities slipping in the world university rankings.
Ciarán Murphy, Bank of Ireland professor of business information systems at UCC, said the rankings were irrelevant. Describing the rankings as “ridiculous”, Prof Murphy said universities could see themselves going up in the table if they handed out more first-class degrees.