The Social Democrats have been granted provisional society status by Trinity’s Central Societies Committee today.
The party, founded in July 2015 with a strong commitment to the “Nordic model” and society with both strong services and enterprise, has been working on establishing a strong presence in Trinity since Freshers’ Week.
Speaking to The University Times by phone, Joe O’Connor, Youth Development Co-ordinator for the Social Democrats, expressed his confidence that the party would always achieve society status, due to the “very significant level of interest and a great response from Trinity students”.
A provisional committee has been establish ahead of an EGM next Thursday where a permanent committee will be elected. O’Connor expressed his belief that “we’ll have a strong group of people in place by the end of next week”.
The party collected more than the requisite 200 signatures over the course of Freshers’ Week, and has held multiple meetings in Trinity, including a meeting for interested, Dublin-based students on October 4th. At this meeting one of the party’s three leaders, Stephen Donnelly TD, spoke about the party and asked those present how they would like to see young people integrated into the party structure. Donnelly will speak at Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union’s general election debate next Tuesday on behalf of the Social Democrats.
The party has previously said they are keen to integrate young people into the party without creating a separate youth wing. Catherine Murphy TD, another of the party’s three leaders, told The University Times back in September: “We feel that sometimes when there is a youth wing it can almost be a lighter element of the party”. She continued: “We want to integrate young members into the mainstream policy development and campaigning”.
With provisional status, the society has access to the facilities in the CSC office and can quality certain grants from the CSC under several headings. To gain full status, however, a society must be in existence for a year, have submitted satisfactory accounts, a secretary’s report and a copy of their constitution and have gained at least 50 fully paid up members. Provisional recognition expires after a period of eighteen months.
As a political party in Trinity, the Social Democrats will join Young Fine Gael, Ógra Fianna Fáil, Labour Youth and the Social Workers Student Society. Renua, however, have attempted to have a society established on campus, but failed to gain the requisite number of signatures to gain society status. The party gathered 176 out of the requisite 200 signatures during Freshers’ Week. Speaking to The University Times at a Trinity Politics Society event last night, Lucinda Creighton, Renua leader, said: “I hear we’re pretty close to getting the requisite number of signatures”.
Ahead of their national seminar in November, the Social Democrats have focused on establishing themselves in campuses across Ireland, and according to O’Connor are “very strong” in all the colleges, as well as having “points of contact in several institutes of technology”.
