Debating and Public Speaking at St. Vincent’s Secondary School continues to go from strength to strength with the teams and their coach, Ms. O’Hagan, adding to their accolades with a prestigious appearance by Emma Connolly, a fifth year student, in the national final of the Oireachtas TedEd Talks series. She is one of fifteen students who have been selected nationally to write, develop and deliver a Ted Talk in the Round Room of the Mansion House on Tuesday 22 January 2019. The competition has been conceived to mark one hundred years since the first sitting of the Dail in that very room on January 21st 1919.
The celebration of this centenary comes after the Houses of the Oireachtas hosted a programme of events to highlight the history of the suffrage movement and its leaders in Ireland and the impact of wider voting rights. As well securing the right of women to vote, 1918 was also the year in which the first woman was elected to the British Parliament at Westminster.
Countess Markievicz, who represented a Dublin constituency, never took her seat at Westminster. Instead, she joined the revolutionary first Dáil, becoming the first female TD. Emma will blaze a trail for female public speakers as she makes her Oireachtas debut.