Offaly students to compete in Student Enterprise National Final

Students from four Offaly secondary schools will compete in the Student Enterprise National Final in Mullingar next week.

For the first time the national final for Ireland’s largest student entrepreneurial programme will be held in the Midlands, taking place in the Mullingar Park Hotel on Thursday, May 9. Over 80 of Ireland’s brightest young entrepreneurial minds will compete in the finals of the Student Enterprise Programme from the 26,000 or so who began their businesses in September.

The local competitors are as follows:

Senior Category - D. Fogarty Woodworks from the Sacred Heart School, Tullamore

Intermediate Category - Peace of Mind Jewellery from Oaklands Community College, Edenderry

Junior Category – Sweet Tooth Hampers from Gallen Community School, Ferbane

My Entrepreneurial Journey – Golf Girls from Tullamore College

The initiative of the Local Enterprise Offices has seen almost 400,000 secondary school students take part since it began in 2003. The 81 shortlisted businesses will exhibit at the National Finals where winners will be announced across the three categories of senior, intermediate and junior and one business will be named Student Enterprise of the Year for 2024.

Chair of the Local Enterprise Offices’ Enterprise Education Committee, Michael Nevin, said: “Year on year, we see an amazing spread of businesses from across the country in our National Finals. The interest in entrepreneurship and the skills that come with it is increasing. Last year, we had one of our biggest participation figures for the programme with over 28,000 taking part. These students are hugely engaged with the challenges of creating and running a business and not only that but they want to create businesses that will make a difference in the world. And whatever the finals and the future hold for these students these skills will stand by them.”

The finalists cover all sectors of business from seaweed harvesting and medical identification to farm safety and portable cranes. For the programme, each student enterprise is challenged with creating, setting up and running their own business, and must show viable sales of their service or product.

The entrepreneurial journey for many does not end when the National Final wraps up each year. Many go on to make their mark on the business world both in Ireland and overseas across many sectors. One such student is Niamh Murray from Ballycumber who attended Moate Community School.

Niamh took part in the National Final back in 2015 with her student business Once Upon A Rhyme, a novel idea that brought nursery rhymes into the 2st century by printing them on clothing items.

Nine years on and Niamh is now co-founder of an innovative new Irish business called ForgetMeNot which is changing the lives of people living with dementia. Niamh and her business partner Amy Boyden have created an innovative new app based on Reminiscence Therapy that improves communication for people living with the disease.

The Student Enterprise Programme is open to students of all ages at senior level, with three separate categories ; Junior (1st year), Intermediate (2nd and 3rd year) and Senior (4th, 5th and 6th year, LVA, LCA and Youth Outreach). There are also a number of prizes that recognise achievements across specific categories, including the “Best Business Website,” “Sustainability Award,” the “Smart Business Idea,” the “My Entrepreneurial Journey,” “Finance Award,” “Technology Award,” and “Intellectual Property.”