Ms Claire N? hUisceith:

On behalf of the North South Youth Forum, I thank the committee for the invitation to present today. My pronouns are she-her. I am a member of the North South Youth Forum’s Northern group as well as an executive committee member at Northern Ireland Youth Forum, NIYF. For our presentation, I will begin with an introduction to our project and I will be followed by Eve from Dublin, Hannah and Sarah from Louth, Eric from Galway and finally, Cohen, who is also from the Northern group.

We are delighted to be here as we believe youth engagement with government and decision-makers is important. It creates a platform between those who have power and those who sometimes feel they do not. We want decision-makers to act on young people’s right to be heard and involve them when making decisions and writing policies that affect our lives.

The North South Youth Forum is a youth-led programme connecting young people across the island of Ireland with a focus on peacebuilding and promoting youth voice. It engages with decision-makers and politicians to allow young people to have their say and voices heard on issues facing them. The programme does this by creating a platform for young people to discuss the issues they and people in their communities face.

This was established in 2012 by the Northern Ireland Youth Forum. In 2021, NIYF received funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and during this programme we hosted four “Have your say" days across the island - in the North, Galway, Louth and Cork. These events gathered young people’s views and opinions and, following these events, we worked together to create a key asks document, which members will have received in advance of our meeting today.

Our 2023-24 group came together from NIYF, Ballymun Regional Youth Resource, Youth Work Ireland Louth and Youth Work Ireland Galway to continue this work, which includes training on young people’s rights, democracy and lobbying and developing our understanding as a group of the unique history we have on this island. Members will hear directly from the young people representing the four groups.

As members will have seen from our briefing presentation, each of the groups has come up with their own briefing papers, which include an introduction to their organisations, key topics and asks they have focused on as part of the North South Youth Forum and a key ask that we would like the committee to act on. Dublin's key topic is regeneration, Louth’s key topic is lack of services, Galway's key topic is misinformation and disinformation and the North’s is political instability.

I will now pass on to Eve, who is representing Ballymun Regional Youth Resource in Dublin.