The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) welfare working group alongside the vice-president for welfare will plan a pathway to a national welfare campaign – similar to the Breaking the Barriers campaign – encompassing all existing welfare mandates, USI congress decision this afternoon.
The motion was proposed by Ciarán Watts, the vice-president for welfare and equality of Maynooth Students’ Union, and USI vice-president for Welfare Róisin O’Donovan.
The mandate also means that if the national campaign is deemed feasible a motion will be brought to congress next year to scrap all existing welfare campaign mandates.
The campaign will include all health issues – including mental, physical and sexual – that currently have individual campaigns.
Speaking in favour of the motion, Watts said after “seeing the success of the Break the Barriers campaign in bringing a load of different aims of students’ unions under the one banner as a collective message”, he felt that a similar campaign could “work really well on the welfare side of things”.
He also said that “so many different campaigns, so many different names, sometimes things can get lost in the messaging” and that putting all campaigns under a single banner would make them more “recognisable” to students.
The motion received some discussion from those present, with Vice-President for Equality and Citizenship Megan Reilly proposing that two parts of the motion be removed.
She said that the “congress believes” part of the motion, which said that a national campaign “would be the best way to ensure that the Welfare related campaign activities of USI are identifiable on a national level” could be replaced with something less “prescriptive”.
She also proposed removing the “further mandates” part of the motion, as she said that the existing mandates brought a “wealth of knowledge”, and that it was unnecessary to remove them to bring forward “one comprehensive campaign”.
“We just need to be able to roll that campaign out with its own branding”, she added.
However, both proposals were voted down and the original wording of the motion was passed.
