News Editor
President Michael D. Higgins will be visiting Trinity College Dublin on the 3rd and 4th of February to coincide with the inaugural Trinity Economic Forum (TEF). This will be President Higgins’ first visit to any third level institution in Ireland as President.
The concept for the forum was developed by two economics students who felt that “much of the political discourse surrounding Ireland and its economic well-being was backward-looking, and ultimately still framed in reference to the long-dead Celtic Tiger”.
“TEF brings students from across every university both north and south,” Seán Gill told The University Times. “The whole idea is to try and develop solutions from the ground up and open discourse on an undergraduate level. The President spoke in his inaugural address about building the youths so we asked him if he would like to come along for the opening address on Friday, so we’re looking forward to that.”
The focus of TEF will be on the future and how we can reclaim our economic sovereignty. TEF hope that some of their delegates will be making the decisions that will shape the future Ireland and that the spirit of the Trinity Economic Forum will inform their decisions.
The idea for TEF came to co-founders Seán Gill (3rd year Economics and Maths) and Gary Finnerty (2nd year Economics) separately last year. They envisioned a summit where students could come from all over Ireland to discuss the issues facing us and the fractured state of economics globally. The third co-founder, Patrick Lynch (4th year Economics and Business), was brought on board to help with the organisation of the Forum. More students were brought in to coordinate communications and PR, speaker liaison, event coordination and logistics.
The final organising committee is composed of nine students who are running the forum on a voluntary basis, with the founders initially having to put their own money towards the project before PWC offered to sponsor the event.
