Portlaoise College students Luke Kelly, Byron Sage McGuirk and Lee Carroll Talbot were thrilled to represent the school in the BT Young scientist competition in the RDS, Dublin. As part of the 550 entries into this prestigious event, the lads were disappointed to not pick up an award but extremely grateful for the experience.

Byron commented ‘ Meeting new people with similar interests was fantastic and seeing the new ideas that other students had in their projects was really interesting. The standard was really high, such a great competiton’. Lee was also taken aback by the experience but was particularly satisfied with the attention his project gathered, ‘ We had so many visitors to our stand over the 4 days and this meant a lot to us that people were interested in our work’.

Teacher Miss Aoife Fox was glowing in her praise of the students, ‘They have put so much time and effort into their work and really have an appetite for next year’s competition already!’. Over the 4 days there were thousands of visitors to the RDS, most welcome of all were the Portlaoise College contingent on the Thursday. Minister Charlie Flanagan also paid a visit.

The final word goes to Luke Kelly, ‘This whole experiences has been so much fun and really inspiring, we can’t wait to get back into work for 2020!’