Cathal Brugha
Michael Collins
Good afternoon to my many many fans who keep up to date with my blogs every week. This week was a goodie in Creative Digital Media for two reasons. One, we went on a class trip to Dáil and Science Gallery and two, we get a nice little break for two weeks for our Easter holidays. Being a student has many benefits.
So on Tuesday the 23rd the 3 class groups met up on Kildare Street at the wee hours of 11am to visit Leinster House. The tour was arranged by our lecturer Clodagh Lynch and Ronan Mullen who also works at Itb. Ronan was able to set up the tour because he is actually a senator in the Seanad. Ronan is an independent whose constituency is the National College of Ireland and so was elected in by college graduates from the likes of Trinity, Maynooth, Galway etc.
This was the first time I have ever been to Leinster house and to be honest I never even thought I’d be too pushed to go. Politics are not something I have really taken too much interest in over the years which I know is terrible but ya know, we aren’t all perfect. It is just something, that as much as I’d like to know more about, often bores me to tears. Saying that though I’m really glad I went because it was extremely interesting and I definitely learned more about the system of Government we have. I think the one and only time our political system was explained to me was in primary school which is over 10 years now. Ridiculous. Ronan also gave us a good talk last week to prep us on the history of our republic, our constitution and the 3 powers of government in Ireland. It helped having the background in my head so when I had my wander around I knew what the two houses did. I’m not going to get into it now because I’d be here all day writing about it so heres a nice link to wet your political taste buds: http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/.
So yeah, we went inside so we did for a cup of coffee. I was expecting a quaint coffee shop but no, of course it was a full bar that we went into. I never would have thought there was a bar in the house. The tour guide took us around firstly to ‘An Dáil Éireann’ and it was great to actually see the place where it all gets done. It was smaller than it looks on telly 
Some facts about the Dáil:
The current, 30th Dáil has 166 members.
Members are directly elected at least once in every five years by the people of the Republic of Ireland.
The Dáil also has exclusive power to:
- Propose the budget (which may not originate in the Senate).
- Ratify treaties.
- Declare war or permit the state to participate in a war.
The current Dáil derives from the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, but claims a direct line of descent from the ‘First Dáil’ of 1919.
After lunch we went to the science gallery at Trinity College. I had a very different picture of what that was going to be in my head. I was let down quite a lot. It was simply a single exhibition called
HYPERBOLIC CROCHET CORAL REEF: A WOOLLY WONDER. It’s a woolly wonder how it became a display in the first place. It was bits of crochet reef which was put together by plenty of different people. There’s also some sort of confusing science behind it so here’s a link to the site because it really don’t want to explain it: http://www.sciencegallery.com/.
So that was it. Leinster House was great and the science gallery, not so much. Thanks again to Ronan for setting it up. Later folks.
