Ms Noelle O'Connell:

The My Vision for Europe programme is a transition year programme which we run in collaboration with our partners in the European Parliament information office, the Department of the Taoiseach, the European Commission, Community Relations in Schools, CRIS, Northern Ireland, the Michael Sweetman education trust and a number of different bodies. We invite transition year students to upload a video on a number of different themes on EU matters. This year, due to a combination of factors, the decision was taken by all parties involved that given Ireland would hold the EU Presidency next year, it will be European Year of Citizens and given our increased workload and the challenge to our resource capacity with the increased level of Blue Star engagement, the My Vision for Europe programme will be in abeyance next year. However, we hope to reactivate it in 2014.

In the context of the citizen dialogue launch event, on 10 January, we are encouraging anyone who wants to attend to upload a home made YouTube video. We would love to see as many transition year students as possible get involved in this and hope this will, somehow, replicate what the My Vision for Europe programme did. Time is short for this.