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| PRESS RELEASE: Students decide that David Irving debate should go ahead? |
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For immediate release Last night,Galway students gave the go ahead for David Irving to speak in the university.At the meeting of NUI Galway's Literary and Debating society,a packed 300-seat Kirwan theatre of Galway students debated and voted on the motion "That This House Would Allow David Irving to Speak at This House".The majority sided with the proposition. The society had previously been in correspondence with this prominent right-wing figure who spent three years in an Austrian prison under Holocaust Denial Legislation. Mr. Irving had expressed an interest in visiting the longstanding society to speak on his theories about the Nazi Holocaust. Due to the strong views surrounding Irving, the committee felt it right to place the decision in the hands of its members. On holding a secret ballot for the motion,Vice-Auditor, Ms. Jacqueline Driscol, a student of Medicine, said that "there are few people who have tested the boundaries of the right to free speech more than David Irving. This is a referendum, of sorts, to see where our members think those boundaries of free speech in university lie". After votes were counted and results had been announced, Dan Colley, Auditor of the society stated that "The students who have shown up tonight have submitted themselves to the rigour of debate and democracy. To those of you who find yourself in the minority, it is your right to protest the event and make your dissent known. It is not your right to physically stop this debate going ahead. That would be an assertion of a minority view on the will of the majority". The Literary and Debating Society's chief aim, according to their website www.literaryanddebating.com, is the provision of a forum for free speech in NUI Galway, where students can address issues of topical and perennial importance without fear of persecution. Also note: The Lit & Deb have also hosted pro-Islamic Terrorism pundit, Anjem Choudary and in were banned from the University's campus 1870(http://www.literaryanddebating.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=39&Itemid=27) David Irving appeared in the last two years in the Oxford Union Society and on the Late Late Show, RTE Irving's appearance at the UCC Philosophical Society was cancelled due to security concerns The Literary and Debating Society, this academic year, will have been addressed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bertie Ahern, US Congressman Bruce Morrison and US Senator Mike Gravel. |