Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has extended the term of four part-time officer positions by another two years, two years after the mandate for several positions expired.
The mandate for the positions of Access Officer, Environment Officer, Ethnic Minority Officer and Volunteer Forum Coordinator, ran out two years ago. TCDSU continued to hold elections for them in the interim.
As the mandates for the positions had run out at the last council, the union had to rerun the elections for each officership. All of the elections were uncontested. No-one put themselves forward for the position of Volunteer Forum Coordinator. The position became vacant earlier this year after Daire Hennessy, who was elected to the position in March, stepped down.
In an email statement to The University Times, the EMS Convenor Daniel O’Reilly said that “the mandates expired most likely because it’s such a hectic time trying to make sure all the PTOs are reelected at last council, it just slipped through the cracks to check if those PTOs still actually existed”.
“It’s also not widely known that some PTO positions expire, probably because not all of them do”, he said. “It wasn’t anyone’s particular fault.”
“In practice, we’ve already had these officers and they’ve been doing valuable work … from an accountability standpoint it’s important that the Union avoid taking such strong action as having dedicated officers and expending resources on their campaigns without a mandate from students to do so”, he added.
In October, 2015, former Communications Officer Samuel Riggs put forward a motion to remove the position of environmental officer, which had been created earlier in the year by former TCDSU President Lynn Ruane.
TCDSU introduced the position of Access Officer in 2014. The positions of Ethnic Minority Officer and Volunteer Forum Coordinaror were both created in 2017.
