Why It’s Important for Young People to Have a Voice by Sorcha Cusack

Growing up, we learn to resent being told what to do. It’s almost instinctive. If it’s not our parents, it’s our teachers, if it’s not our teachers it’s that ever present “society” that tells us we aren’t old enough to make decisions for ourselves so we’re to follow their rules until we’re old enough to “know better”.

Well I would argue that we do know better.

Young people in Ireland are very capable, educated and opinionated individuals. We need to show that we understand that there are decisions to be made regarding our futures and we need to propose ourselves as the people who need to be piloting these decisions.

​Ministers, politicians, teachers and the community want to help better the future for our generation but their experience of being a young person is far out-dated to that of our own. Our problems and our concerns may not even dawn on the “powers that be” unless we point them out. To do that, we must take action and not just advise the decision-makers, but become them.

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