Students at Loreto Community School in Milford grilled a number of candidates yesterday during a ‘heated’ General Election debate at the school.
The event was organised by Leaving Cert politics students, Aoife Callaghan and Loren Connolly, with the assistance of teacher, Joe McBride.
The candidates who took part were Minister Charlie McConalouge, Claudia Kennedy, Padraig mclochlainn, Nuala Carr, Mary T Sweeney, Charles Ward and Gerry McKeever.
The lively event was moderated by Greg Hughes from Highland Radio.
Among the attendees were 46 students who are legally registered to vote in next Friday’s election. The hope of the organisers is to help educate their fellow students on who to vote for. They described the event as a ‘roaring success’ and said the debate consisted of questions from members of the audience directed to the panel.
This resulted in a lively, and sometimes ‘heated’, debate between candidates.
The main issues brought to the panel by the students were, education, housing and the cost of living crisis as well as immigration and the defective block crisis.
Some of the Loreto Milford students with election candidates and debate moderator, Greg Hughes.
One student, Alannah Gibbons, said many of those in this room are studying hard and have aspirations of pursuing their dream courses at Universities in Dublin or Galway. However, she said, they will be prevented from doing so; “not because we did not achieve the CAO points required, but because we simply cannot afford the extortionate costs of the college fees and scandalously high rents. In many instances there is simply no student accommodation available, regardless of price.”
Another, Alice O’Connor, pointed out that a recent survey conducted in the school revealed that one in every six students is living in a mica/defective blocks home. Furthermore, 40% of the 900 students and staff in the school have an extended family member who is impacted by the crisis.
When Dublin had a similar crisis, she pointed out, they were issued a ‘proper true 100%’ redress scheme.
“And, yet here in Donegal, we get a scheme that falls far short of that,” she said.
Student Lauren McElhinney said they are seeing a massive increase in the rise of far-right, anti-immigration protests and violence towards immigrants coming into Ireland.
“A lot of this hate is being directed at the immigrants, not the government who have mishandled the problem,” she said.
A quickfire round of general questions also took place at the end.
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