November Council Meeting

The November Council Meeting was held on Saturday November 26^th when we had a good attendance. A number of important decisions were taken at this meeting.

We discussed and adopted the 2012 Budget recommended by our Finance Committee and Executive earlier in the month. Thanks to excellent management by the DG and Management team in Clyde road, we were able to adopt a balanced budget of income against expenditure despite considerable expense next year on the ongoing TV Advertising Campaign which is proving so successful in public reaction terms.

We discussed and approved the Membership Task Force Report chaired by my predecessor Martin Lowery. Our Membership Director Margie McCarthy presented the report which had been unanimously accepted by the Task Force - to continue with the present Rules of Membership as approved by Council in April 2011 and not to introduce a new 'Graduate' grade as a stepping stone to 'Ordinary' Membership MIEI.

We had a presentation from Paul Sheridan Education Manager and Caitriona Geraghty STEPS Manager on all of the educational initiatives currently being undertaken by Engineers Ireland. Tremendous progress has been made in implementing the Maths and Science Task Force Report in terms of integrating the recommendations particularly on Project Maths into the STEPS programme for Primary and Secondary Schools and a whole host of other initiatives including Engineers Week (February 27^th – March 2^nd next year) and Maths grinds for Leaving and Junior Certificate students.

We had a Staff Survey Presentation by our HR Director John Butler which will greatly inform our staff development and training programmes and to further improve interaction with the Regions and Sectors.

We filled a casual vacancy on the Council by secret ballot electing Stephen McIntyre of Google who will help us build our profile into the social media side of our Computing Division.

We agreed the venues for our Annual Conferences in 2013, 2014 and 2015 as Dublin, Sligo and Tralee. The Dublin Conference will dovetail with the European Young Engineers Conference to be held here in 2013.

In conclusion I thanked the members of Council for their ongoing voluntary effort in attending meetings in Dublin on a Saturday and noted that the work of Engineer Volunteers continues to inspire our staff who coordinate all of the annual activities.