Ms Aideen Howard:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee. I thank the committee for the invitation to The Ark's children's council to appear before it. I am the director of The Ark, the children's cultural centre. I am here today in The Ark building in Temple Bar with the three speakers, from whom the committee will hear shortly. We are in a large space and at a distance. It is really lovely that we can be together. The children have prepared their presentations remotely and on Zoom. This is a very nice and welcome opportunity that we can present them to the committee together, albeit at a distance and remotely.

The three members of our children's council are LilyRose Wogan-Martin, Conor James and Olga Buckina. Today is about hearing from them directly and giving their voices and opinions due weight in the matters that affect them, such as the recent experience of the pandemic. My role this afternoon is to simply introduce the children and, if appropriate or necessary, to mediate afterwards any questions if that is helpful.

I will first give some background on the process that led to today's presentations. As the Chairman mentioned, as part of the Brightening Air festival we premiered and live-streamed a new show about children's experiences of the pandemic recently and about the milestones they have missed out on. In addition, we shared a national call-out, asking children to give us their personal stories in their own words. The children's council received 318 responses from children aged between five and 13 years, from Kilkenny, Dublin, Cork, Kerry, Louth, Donegal, Offaly, Galway, Kildare, Limerick, Westmeath and Wicklow. The response was from well beyond Dublin, where we are based.

The council, represented by the three members the committee can see today, then read all of the submissions, discussed them during four Zoom sessions, and then set about collating the experiences in order to inform their speeches today. What the members will hear today has been written by the three speakers directly, informed by their own lived experiences but also representing the views of other children. That is very important to them and to us because the practice of using their position to give voice to other children and to seldom heard children is key to their work and our reason for being.

They and we are extremely proud that they are the first children of their age to present to the committee. I thank the committee for allowing this to happen today and for hearing the voices of children directly. I hand over now to the three children, the first of whom is LilyRose.