Edmund Heaphy | Deputy Editor
UCC Labour and UCC LGBT have condemned a motion passed at a meeting of UCC’s Students’ Union council last night, which abolished all mandates and policy decisions made by the council in the past five years.
In a statement, UCC Labour said that the motion “throws away five years of progressive lobbying and campaigning”, and criticised that the union “neglected to re-implement core motions and policies that make up the day-to-day running of the Students’ Union”. It is understood that the union no longer has a mandate to distribute condoms, and that mandates for core working groups of the union, such as the Equality Working Group, have been abolished as a result of the motion.
UCC LGBT said that a “vast amount of policy relating to UCC’s historical record” in relation to its efforts for equality is now “redundant”. In its statement, the society said that it was “safe to say” that the the Union no longer has an equality policy, and said that the “ardent work of reps over the last five years has been abolished in one swift brush” by the council.
UCC Labour have also criticised the union’s “lack of publicity on [the] motion and its results”. The University Times understands that the motion, which was proposed by the union’s Education Officer, was not widely publicised before last night’s council vote.
Speaking to The University Times, Communications Officer for UCCSU, Barry Nevin, said that the motivation for the motion came as a result of “discrepancies in recording of past minutes and mandates”, saying that “the Students’ Union [could not] ascertain definitively what mandates [were] in place.” He said that, due to the poor record keeping, “many motion and mandates” were “lost entirely”, rendering them “redundant”.
He said that “sabbatical teams can only work off clear, unambiguous mandates”, and that, because of the motion, future sabbatical teams will be able to “effectively carry out the democratically expressed wishes of the students.”
Nevin said that the motion was a “hugely positive step for Student Council”, because of the “lack of a coherent policy booklet”, which meant that it was “as if the policies passed didn’t exist”. The University Times understands that then-UCC Deputy President, Annie Hoey, completed a policy book last year which compiled previously unrecorded motions and policies from the union’s council. As a result of the motion, this work has been voided.
The motion, Nevin said, demonstrates the council’s “resolve in both holding sabbatical officers to account for their actions, and enabling them to properly implement the democratic wishes and demands of the student body.”
Samuel Riggs and Jack Leahy contributed reporting to this piece.
