Dr. Niall Muldoon:

We will invite all members of the committee to next year's event. Last year, we started an event called Child Talks, which is essentially a TED Talks event for children. This year, we invited children and young people to send in a short video in which they talk about a children's rights issue for which they have a real passion. We received a large number of applications and we have ended up with 12 young people speaking in Dublin Castle today about these issues. We have spent the last four months working with them, giving them speech and language classes, giving them speechwriting classes and helping them with their performances. Young people from all over the country will be able to stand up and speak for seven minutes on a range of topics that are important to them and close to their hearts, including climate change, period poverty, personalised budgets for disability, mental health and school transport. They are being given an opportunity to be heard in the same way that 157 children got to be heard on climate issues last week. The Minister for Children and Youth Affairs is opening the Child Talks event and will stay to listen to these young people as well. From our point of view, this is an example of children's rights in action. Approximately 450 people from all over the country are coming to watch. The event will be live-streamed on RTÉ News Now to enable children and teachers in schools all around the country who cannot get to it to hear what is said. The essence of this event is to bring children's voices to as many people as possible. They are being allowed to talk about the issues they want to talk about and not just the issues we might think they want to talk about. For me, it will become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. As young people start to talk about these matters, we will start to bring them up in here and the Oireachtas will have a greater opportunity to make changes in these areas. That is what Child Talks is about.