{"id":413900,"date":"2026-04-23T18:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/413900\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T18:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T18:45:08","slug":"tipperary-students-advance-to-final-of-concern-ireland-debates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/413900\/","title":{"rendered":"Tipperary students advance to final of Concern Ireland Debates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Students from Thurles\u2019s Ursuline Secondary School have reached the final of the all-island Concern School debates, contested by more than 170 entrants.<\/p>\n

Ursuline faced Monaghan school and previous all-island debate winners, Largy College, in the semi-finals in Dublin on Wednesday, April 15.<\/p>\n

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The students from Ursuline, Lily Murphy, Lily Marchand, Trudy Wilson and Aoibhin Rae, successfully defeated the motion, \u2018Western democracy is purely symbolic,\u2019 to win the debate.<\/p>\n

Debaters explored whether western nations are beacons of democracy with models of freedom, fairness and representation that other countries aspire to follow, or if beneath this image lies a more complicated reality, where democratic ideals do not fully translate into meaningful power for ordinary citizens.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re delighted! We\u2019re happy to have won and to go through to the final and find out the final motion,\u201d said Lily Murphy from Ursuline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe debates are a really good thing to get involved in, for confidence and public speaking which is really important for nearly all careers. And also, just to have more knowledge about the world and current affairs,\u201d added her teammate, Lily Marchand.<\/p>\n

Ursuline have been all-island debate winners once before, in 1995. Their opponents in the final at the Helix on Thursday, May 7, are Cross and Passion College from Ballycastle in Antrim.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like everything, there are highs and lows, but it went well for us tonight but that\u2019s not always reflected. The debates build so much character, it makes such a difference to their critical thinking, their ability to prove a point and to accept criticism respectfully, deal with it, and move on. It\u2019s all of those things,\u201d said Louise Downey, the team\u2019s mentor, about the benefits she sees for her students in the debates.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo reach the final two teams out of 170 schools is an incredible achievement. The standards of this year\u2019s debates have been consistently high, so to get to the final is a testament to the hard work that both teams and their teachers have put in. This is just the start of their journey as active global citizens, equipped to advocate for people experiencing crisis around the world,\u201d said Georgina Eastaugh, acting head of Global Citizenship at Concern.<\/p>\n

The Concern all-island debates mark 41 years this year. Former participants include broadcaster Claire Byrne, former finance minister Paschal Donohue and RT\u00c9\u2019s Brian O\u2019Donovan.<\/p>\n

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The debates were started in 1984 to promote positive dialogue and shared learning and are the largest school debating contest in the country. Open to schools from all 32 counties, they are run by Concern with support from Irish Aid and volunteer adjudicators.<\/p>\n

Any school interested in taking part in the next academic year\u2019s debate programme, or anyone who would like to learn more about volunteering a couple of hours across the school year as an adjudicator, can email debates@concern.net.<\/p>\n

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ADVERTISEMENT – CONTINUE READING BELOW<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Students from Thurles\u2019s Ursuline Secondary School have reached the final of the all-island Concern School debates, contested by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,836,25823,9123],"class_list":{"0":"post-413900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-schools","12":"tag-thurles","13":"tag-tipperary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}