Today we had the exclusive chance to visit the Irish Parliament. Before our visit, we had a quick lecture from Sean at CEA CAPA HQ to get an overview of how Irish politics and government are structured. For a quick overview for you, there is an upper and lower parliament, the upper is less important then the lower house and is said to be where parties send their embarrassing members to keep them out of public view. There is also a president and prime minister but the president, unlike America, has little to no power and is there mainly as a figure head to sign things, similar to the British monarchy.
That was a very fast overview of our very fast overview we received ahead of our visit but now we can get to the good stuff: the Parliament visit. Unfortunately, we were unable to take many pictures inside the building as it was not allowed but the experience was memorable enough. We began outside after security by meeting a TD from the parliament, these are like representatives in the parliament. After a quick photo with him, we went inside with an usher who gave us a grand tour filled with history of the building, the parliament itself and what goes on in the building now. We saw the lower house first, a large blue carpeted room where the representatives gather a couple times a week to meet and discuss laws, proposals, etc. That night, the meeting was due to start at 2:00PM and run until midnight. After we saw the lower house we moved up… to the upper house. This room was much less grandiose than the lower but it was still quite nice and we were actually allowed to go fully into it. This was quite a weird feeling since I haven’t ever been anywhere that exclusive in a government building. After this we got a little more history from the usher as we explored different rooms and hallways then headed out to get out of the way for the 2:00PM parliament meeting.
After we broke for a quick lunch we all headed back to the CEA CAPA HQ to meet with Martina Devlin. Martina is a journalist and author best known for her novels, Charlotte, Ship of Dreams and Call Me Madame. Martina disused her career path as she moved from journalism to novel and play writing and how she found each medium unique and special to her in different ways. She also detailed the importance of journalism especially investigative journalism and stories with a cause. She talked about the hardships journalism has faced and the struggles she personally had with the industry. I found her perspective as a woman journalist very refreshing to hear as often the male perspective is prominent and the female is nowhere to be heard.Overall, a very interesting day meeting some kind of famous people and seeing some very important buildings.
