From Friday 25 January to Sunday 27 January, five students from Presentation College – Liam Bradley, Fiona Butler, Nikola Glowinska, Ciara Glynn and Natalia Sluzel, participated in the Leinster Regional session of the European Youth Parliament (EYP). This was organised through their Guidance Counsellor Ms. Marie Cumiskey and took place in Dublin in Loreto Abbey Dalkey.

The students had the opportunity to get involved in discussions with and as members of various committees including:

·       The Committee on International Trade,

·       The Committee on Security and Defence

·       The Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety

·       The Committee on Foreign Affairs

This is their account of what the weekend involved:

Friday began with ice-breaking games with all the other participants, the organizers, chairpersons and members of the media. After that, students were divided into committees. They then engaged in more team-building exercises and energizers. There were also some inter-committee games to get participants more comfortable around each other. Following dinner, everyone went to the hostel for the night.

Saturday began with an Opening Ceremony. Students then began working on their assigned topics. These included:

The issue of maintaining Ireland and the UK’s trade imports after Brexit.

The lack of legislation on drone warfare in the Middle East.

The problem of growing obesity in the EU.

The EU’s over-dependence on Russian gas.

Students began with discussing the issues relating to their own topics. During that time, to help with perspective and to encourage new thinking, energizer games with students from different committees were played. Committees then came up with resolutions to the issues earlier identified and prepared their Resolutions Booklet. Later after dinner, students enjoyed a quiz with the members from all the other committees followed by a disco.

On Sunday, the General Assembly took place. This consisted of all committees coming together to debate their topics and resolutions. Following an initial energizer, the debating began. Each committee was furnished with the resolutions of the opposing topics in order to prepare arguments and possible rebuttals to the speeches. Every debate lasted roughly forty-five minutes and every individual team involved themselves enthusiastically.

Out of the eight topics, four topics – including the one proposed by Ciara and Natalia’s group were passed by majority vote.  This was a great turn out for the General Assembly. Following this, a ceremony was held in order to close The General Assembly and to say goodbye to a long-standing member of EYP Leinster - James Bradfield.

The weekend concluded with everyone singing “Imagine” by John Lennon. This is an EYP tradition. Liam, Fiona, Nikola, Ciara, and Natalia would like to thank Ms. Cumiskey for giving them the opportunity to meet new people, to consider and debate the issues facing Europe and come up with possible solutions to resolve the issues facing Europe today. The whole weekend was a fantastic experience.