Comhairle na nÓg

Comhairle na nÓg means Youth Council, it provides young people with an opportunity to discuss and debate matters of relevance to them and their community. Through Comhairle na nÓg young people are encouraged to speak out and have their voices heard around various topics. There is a Comhairle na nÓg located in the 31 local authorities of the country, we are Dublin City Comhairle na nÓg our members are aged 12-17years.

Dublin City Comhairle na nÓg About us

Each year we focus on a working topic that is voted for by the young people who attend our annual meeting in Croke Park. Young people aged 12-17years can attend our AGM, they must attend school /a youth organisation or live in the Dublin City Council Area. 

• We have 47 members aged 12-17years.
• Members are elected for a two year term.
• We are youth lead. 
• We focus on a different working topic annually.
• We use our platform to represent the voices of young people.
• We are given the opportunity to be involved in the development of local services and policies.

Each year we focus on a working topic that is voted for by the young people who attend our annual meeting in Croke Park. Our AGM is open to young people aged 12-17years who live or go to school / attend a youth organisations in the Dublin City Council area, you can check if you are in the Dublin City Council Area here.

Some insight into what our AGM looks like

• Our AGM is led by current Dublin City Comhairle members. 
• At the AGM participants discuss topics of importance to young people.
• They vote on the Dublin City Comhairle working topic for the year ahead.
• At the AGM members provide feedback on the progress they have made over the last year.
• New members are elected onto Dublin City Comhairle. 

2023 Working Topic

Our working topic for 2023 was Period Stigma as voted in by the Dublin City Comhairle members at our 2022 Youth Conference.

After several meetings exploring the topic, including consulting a panel of experts, we decided that we would do an awareness campaign on social media and in schools in the Dublin City area.

We made a series of short films on the topic, delving into the shame young people can face due to their periods and how to overcome it. Our goal was to address the stigma surrounding periods and bring young people’s voices to the forefront of the issue.

Period Packs

As part of the awareness campaign we decided to distribute Period Packs to the schools of each Comhairle member. Each Pack contained a leaflet providing essential knowledge of periods, tampons and sanitary pads.

Social Media Launch & Visit from Tokyo Metropolitan Government

In September we held our social media awareness campaign launch in the Rotunda Room of Dublin City Hall. The event was a great success and we had delegates from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government in attendance. We will continue our work with the Delegates when they visit in March 2024

2022 Working Topic:

Our working topic for 2022 was Mental Health as voted in by the Dublin City Comhairle members.

To develop our topic further we explored our initial thoughts as a group, we sought advice and guidance from various organisations such as Walk in My Shoes, Mental Health Ireland, Web wise, Pieta House, A Lust For Life & Jigsaw. 

After many meetings, conversations and planning we decided as a group to focus on the conversation in relation to mental health. We wanted to address the stigma, bring parents, young people and Teachers together to start that conversation. Our focus was on having an open conversation on Mental Health with adults and young people.

Dublin City Comhairle Let’s Talk Mental Health Workshops:

Our workshops took place on Wednesday 28th September, they were facilitated by various mental Organisations and supported by Dublin City Comhairle members.  

The first workshop focused on our schools with students and a staff member attending the workshop and the second workshop focused on our trusted adult and the importance of having the conversation on mental health.

As a group we identified the following key issues in relation to mental health services and young people.

Mental health scenarios for use in the classroom / youth organisation setting:

As a group of young people, we want to open up the conversation on mental health, so we created mental health scenarios to help aid the conversation in both the classroom and youth organisation setting. The scenarios linked below were used as part of our workshops and because they worked so well, we wanted to share them as a resource.

We hope you find them helpful!

Dublin City Comhairle Mental Health Scenarios

2021 Working Topic LGBTQIA+

As with all of our working topics our members voted to work on this topic.

So what did we decide to do! After many months of developing and researching our working topic we decided to focus on the following 3 actions.

Action 1

LGBTQIA+ Social Media Messaging  

It was important for us as young people to be allies of the LGBTQIA+ community. We wanted to show our support and we did that by using our social media Pages as a platform to educate and advocate.

Action 2

“Let’s Be Inclusive” LGBTQIA+ Pledge    

• We created the Let’s Be Inclusive pack this was distributed to various organisations and schools. The pack also contained LGBTQIA+ material e.g. bags, badges, flags and bookmarks.

The pledge lists a number of actions that we felt were important in relation to supporting LGBTQIA+ youth. Our hope is that schools would look at the actions listed and explore how they can further support LGBTQIA+ youth in the school setting. 

Action 3

Dublin City Comhairle na nÓg LGBTQIA+ Pledge.

• To adopt a Dublin City Comhairle na nÓg LGBTQIA+ Pledge.
• Our pledge incorporates actions that we as Dublin City Comhairle na nÓg will take to ensure that we are LGBTQIA+ inclusive.  

2020 Working Topic

Our 2020 working topic was Climate Action and the outcome was “Future Talks” an online youth event for young people aged 12-17years it covered everything from saving the planet to sustainable fashion and featured a Q&A session at the end. 

Speakers included Flossie Donnelly, Tara Stewart and Fridays For Future. 

You can view our Future Talks event here:

Other Initiatives

Aswell as our Future Talks event we developed some anti-waste images as part of a social media campaign:

We also focused on developing youth infographics to highlight the importance of wearing your face covering: 

2019 Working Topic

Our 2019 working topic was education and we were very proud to launch our Education resource entitled “What School Doesn’t Teach You”  developed by us for young people. The resource covers topics such as Relationships, Politics, Life Skills and education the focus of the resource is for young people aged 12-17years.

Get social with us

For updates follow us on Twitter: @DCCcomhairle  Instagram @Dublincitycomhairle

Further information on Dublin City Comhairle na nÓg contact   Mary Mooney Dublin City Comhairle Coordinator.  Tel: 01 222 5394 M: 086 601 4215 E: [email protected]