The sixth UCDSU council of the year featured discussion on the union’s role in exam centres, the amount of flyers provided to election candidates and saw the council vote to end a discussion on the upcoming constitutional review early.
Council votes to end discussion on Constitutional Review early
The discussion around the upcoming UCDSU constitutional review was led by UCDSU President Michael Roche. He said that the review, which will be put to referendum in April, is to “assess how effective our representation is in 2026”. He also claimed that when this year’s sabbatical officer team first read the constitution that they acknowledged there were “a lot of gaps here” and jokingly said that the review was about “cleaning up a load of crap that is within the constitution”.
The discussion was led with an emphasis from council members wanting the review committee to be held accountable, with Stage 4 History Class Rep Éabha Hughes suggesting a clear accountability mechanism to work alongside the IADB. Speaking on the early discussions on the new constitution, Roche said there was a possibility that some of the smaller points in the new constitution may be changeable by the council as opposed to referendum, “but the overall theme would not”. He claimed this would allow more flexibility and add to the longevity of the document, hoping it would help run the union for the next couple of decades. An emergency council meeting was suggested to go through the constitutional review in more detail.
One member of the council submitted a 9B, which immediately sends the council to a vote on whether the current discussion should end. To the surprise of some, the council, including three sabbatical officers, voted to end the discussion early. Many people in the room had previously had their hands up to add to the conversation, but following the vote the conversation was swiftly moved on to the next topic.
eBook Crisis
Educational Officer Matt Mion spoke about the expired motion which mandates the Union to support and advocate for the #ebooksos Campaign. The “eBook crisis” creates major issues for university and public libraries in regard to publishing practices, pricing, and other licensing conditions. This has caused further inequality in third-level education, creating issues relating to accessibility and digital access to learning materials. Mion stated that he has brought this issue to an MEP as he wants the work to continue to be done.
UCDSU at Exam Centres
On the topic of exam centres support, and the SU’s role in exams, questions were raised about accessibility in the RDS and previous issues relating to poor signposting. It was emphasised that a core focus is improving exam conditions, institutional support and the overall student experience. Education Officer Matt Mion described a previous occasion in which the Union successfully raised the issue of multi faith rooms at the RDS. It was also discussed by members of the SU in attendance the planned changes to exam delivery, including new on-campus exam centres from 2027.
Election Flyers
A motion submitted by Architecture College Officer Bianca Munteanu, mandated the UCDSU President to lobby the returning officer to amend the amount of election flyers each candidate receives. The Architecture College Officer noted that as college officer constituencies vary greatly in size, candidates for smaller constituencies often receive an excess of election materials that they struggle to distrubute. Munteanu argued that this excess creates a financial loss for the Union and acts in opposition of their goals of sustainablility. The motion is aimed at lobbying the returning officer to proportionally distrubute election materials in relation to constitency size, and was passed by council.
This article was updated at 10:30 on Tuesday 10th February to clarify the details surrounding the motion related to election flyers.