“We have no future unless we give our young people a future, and turning down a staggering 65% of students who applied for VEC PLC courses means putting all our futures at risk”
Alice Leahy, Director and Co-founder, TRUST presenting Certificates to students at the Liberties College
“Ireland’s best hope is to give young people educational opportunities because they will make a difference for all of us”
Congratulating students on their success in the Liberties College today (Thurs. 22 Oct, 2009) Alice Leahy, Director and Co-Founder of TRUST, the Liberties’ based health and social service for people who are homeless, said that they represent Ireland’s future and we all forget that at our peril. In many ways the current generation of politicians have let us all down, but she was highly confident that the talented and highly educated young people emerging from all of our third level colleges would make a difference, and denying educational opportunities to anyone was not only immoral, it posed a threat to Ireland future progress and prosperity.
“We have no future unless we give our young people a future, and turning down a staggering 65% of students who applied for PLC courses means putting all our futures at risk,” Alice Leahy said.
Describing the cap on placements on VEC PLC course as indefensible, with only 13,000 awarded places out of 37,000 applications, she said that politicians and policy makers had forgotten the reasons why we made such great strides in recent decades. “Ireland’s best hope is to give young people educational opportunities because they will make a difference for all of us. We proved that in the past with the universal acknowledgement that our well educated young people were the most valuable resource in helping our development, especially since we joined the European Union.,” Alice Leahy said.
Alice Leahy made her remarks when presenting PLC and Community Education Awards to students, who were successful in a range of disciplines including professional art and design, media, interior design, community care, nutrition and health care, counseling, child care and special needs education.
