National Award for South Cork Students at Enterprise Finals
Ireland’s Finest Young Student Entrepreneurs Celebrated at National Finals
Students from South Cork have taken 2nd prize in the Senior Category at this year’s Student Enterprise Programme National Finals. The finals of the Local Enterprise Office initiative took place earlier this month in Croke Park.
Supported by Cork County Council’s Local Enterprise Office South Cork, the students from Colaiste Muire, Cobh won 2nd place in the Senior Category. The winning students were Ben Hamilton, Billy Murphy, Callum Gormley Barrett and Adam O' Leary, who worked under the guidance of their teacher, Ciara O’Callaghan. Their student enterprise called ‘Colaiste Muire Student IDs’, produces and sells student ID cards that can be used to receive discounts in local shops.
There were 82 student businesses competing across three main categories for the final in what is Ireland’s largest entrepreneurship programme for second level students. The initiative, funded by the Government of Ireland through Enterprise Ireland and delivered by the 31 Local Enterprise Offices in local authorities throughout the country, saw 25,000 students from almost 500 secondary schools across the country take part.Mayor of the County of Cork, Cllr. Danny Collins said
Year on year the Student Enterprise Programme continues to showcase the very best of Irish ingenuity and entrepreneurship amongst our secondary school students. This year produced a varied selection of businesses, from agricultural products and homemade gifts to products that were built on our unique ability to tell compelling stories. We see every year that the National Finals are not an end point for our student entrepreneurs, but a steppingstone on the next stage of their entrepreneurial journey. From our class of 22/23 we will see some business leaders and global entrepreneurs of the future emerge.
Neale Richmond, T.D., Minister of State for Employment Affairs and Retail Business, who took part in the ceremony, congratulated the students; “Congratulations to everyone who made it to today’s National Finals. With over 25,000 students taking part in this year’s programme, it is a huge achievement to make it to the Finals and shows a real flair for entrepreneurship. Some amazing businesses and entrepreneurs have come from this programme – the majority did not win any prizes but are still running successful businesses today. So, to those of you who won something today, a huge congratulations, but most importantly, to you all, this is the first step on the path, you are the entrepreneurs and business leaders of the future and everyone here today is excited to see what you do next.”