Niamh Mullins was tonight elected Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union’s (TCDSU) volunteer forum co-ordinator, filling a slot left empty after Daire Hennessy vacated the position.
Mullins, a third-year history and political science student, defeated Tidgh Maguire to a position that was left unfilled at the union’s previous council.
Speaking to council before the vote took place, Mullins said she was “able to handle the responsibility” of the position, adding that she wanted to organise by day-time and night-time events.
She said she wanted to increase awareness of volunteers on campus.
The role, which was added to TCDSU’s Union Forum a number of years ago, has responsibility for organising Trinity’s RAG Week.
At its last council, TCDSU extended the term of the officership alongside three others, after their mandate ran out.
The mandate for the positions of access officer, environment officer, ethnic minorities officer also 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.
In an email statement to The University Times, TCDSU Engineering, Maths and Science (EMS) Faculty 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.
