This year saw the introduction of St Mary’s first ever student council whose primary goal within the school is that of improving school life for our fellow students.

The story began in early March when Mr Byrne issued students with a questionnaire to determine if there was any interest amongst the student body in forming a Student Council. The results convincingly showed that over 95% of you, the students, believed it was a worthwhile project in which you were willing to get involved.

In early March, Our elections took place whereby every student had one vote for a class member believed to be capable of effectively serving our student body. And so there were 13: Ronan Quigley, Con Burke, Paul Conroy, Joe O’Dea, Robert Timmons, Pierce Bennett, Ronan Ging, Kevin Sheehan, Stephen Kennedy, Robert O’ Reilly, Patrick McCormack, Michael Kelly and Eamonn Blanc who all agreed to collectively work to improve school life for fellow classmates.

Our first two meetings focused mainly on effective procedures for our Student Council meetings and with elections of our president, Ronan Quigley and secretary, Con Burke. Early in our next school year, we will be welcoming a visit from an experiences facilitator in the field of Student Council who will provide us with some insights on how effective a Student Council functions.

Other early meetings dealt  with various issues such as anti-litter campaigns, facilitating lunchtime student activities, fundraising and the issuing of a fortnightly student newsletter to keep all of our students informed as to what is happening in the school.

Out Easter raffle proved a great success, this being our first fund-raising project. We wish to extend a big thank you to all who supported us-students, parents and teachers.

Mr Meaghair has been kind enough to allow us the use of the Oratory for our fortnightly meetings, until a more suitable location can be found. At our meeting, we express the views of our fellow classmates as to how student life within St Mary’s can be enhanced. However, we do need your assistance with this. Let us know what your ideas are and let’s see if we can help make them happen. We are always available and willing to listen to your views at any time. You can be guaranteed that your view will be expressed at our meeting. Remember-HELP US HELP YOU!

Activities planned for our next school year include various awareness campaigns, establishing links with other student councils in different schools, fund-raising activities and continuing to spread the student news in our fortnightly newsletter.