Young Fine Gael Society, University College Cork The Alfred O’Rahilly Branch Dia Dhaoibh a chairde go léir, It has been a great honour for me to serve on the UCC YFG committee since I started studying here in UCC in September 2013, serving both as first year rep and as secretary. In the past 2 years I have made many new friends and have attended some great national and local YFG and FG events. This year I humbly seek election as Auditor/Chair of UCC Young Fine Gael Society. I hope you will give me your number one vote and I promise to do my very best to improve and maintain this branch over the next 12 months. I believe that I have a lot of the necessary skills to lead this branch into 2016, a General Election Year, with the most important General Election ever for Fine Gael. It will be vital to have as many active members as possible that are willing to canvass. Training for canvassers will have to organised. Finally, It has been a pleasure to work with the outgoing committee and I want offer them my míle buíochas for all they have done for this branch in the past 12 months. Is Mise le Meas, John Forde (Secretary, UCC Young Fine Gael) 1
The following are few points I believe that the next committee can work on to improve our branch.
Membership If elected auditor I will try my best to increase active branch membership and also try to increase attendance from UCC at national events such as Summer School and National Meetings. I believe the best way of doing this is by having a large but realistic number of active, interested members. I believe having a varied programme of events is the best to keep our new members interested and attending regularly.
Events As a branch it is imperative to maintain the correct balance between debates and social nights such as bowling, films.
I hope to organise some guest speakers’ not just Fine Gael public representatives but also
other political and media figures. I believe we need to have some large event either a debate/panel discussion or information
night. An event like this can be a good goal for the year, maybe having it at the end of a semester.
I think in the past we have tried to organise events like these but they have fell through on some occasions for various reasons but due to no fault of anyone. I think we need a new approach to organising these events such setting up a sub-
committee to organise the whole event. I hope to organise some speaker development classes to aid all members in debating at
Model Dáil and other events. I will chair our debates independently and fairly.
I wish to build on the successful collaborative events that were held with other societies last year such as Europa, Pol Soc plus the other political parties and more. These events can help to increase our presence on campus.
Committee I have a few ideas that I believe will help the running of the committee including,
Publishing and circulating the minutes of committee meetings to all committee members
Issuing an Agenda for each committee meeting. I believe this will make it easier to measure our progress against the branch plan for the
I also feel it is necessary for the committee to meet up at least one a fortnight. The committee shall be seen to propose motions at Summer School and conferences. It is important that the committee is kept abreast of all financial transactions and dealings.
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PR and Communication I believe lots can be done to improve this from flyering, posters, tea and coffee stands.
We need to make the best use of the Societies Guild facilities i.e. event wall.
The possibility is there to submit information to the YFG national social media accounts.
Also as a branch we have many accounts set up on different social media applications
these need to be re activated and maintained. I will try my best to get back our website.
The main flows of communication to members should remain the weekly emails and texts.
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