Castlepollard student awarded €20,000 scholarship

Sinead Clarke, a former student of Castlepollard Community College, was awarded Naughton Foundation Scholarships worth €20,000 at a ceremony in the Trinity Business School in Dublin on Saturday last.

The award was presented by founding patrons of the Naughton Foundation, Dr Martin Naughton and his wife Carmel, who were joined by Mr Simon Harris, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to award winning students with their accolades and cheques.

County Westmeath had two Naughton Scholars awarded on the day, Rory Kilgarriff, a former student of Marist College has accepted a place at University College Dublin studying Engineering and Sinead, who has accepted a place studying Engineering at Dublin City University.

Rory and Sinead both join 37 exceptional Irish students who were awarded third level scholarships towards their studies in the areas of engineering, science, technology, and maths.

Both prize winner’s former secondary schools Marist College and Castlepollard Community College were awarded a prize of €1000 each towards their school’s science facilities, for their support of these students.

Supporting academic and innovative excellence in Irish students, the Naughton Foundation Scholarship Awards are an investment in the future of Ireland's reputation as a country with outstanding graduates promoting the study of engineering, science, and technology at third level.

Since its establishment in 2008, scholarships worth over €6 million have been awarded to over 350 students.

The scheme started in three counties and has continued to expand annually to become a nationwide scheme in 2016.

There is one guaranteed scholarship (€20,000) for each participating county, with some counties awarded more than one scholarship and each scholarship is worth €5,000 per annum for each year of a student’s three- or four-year undergraduate degree.

More than 250 schools have also benefited from this prize to date with some schools receiving it on more than one occasion.

Speaking about the growth and development of the programme over the past fourteen years, Dr Martin Naughton has said: “We started supporting students in their science and engineering studies in Louth, Meath, and Monaghan in 2008 to give back to our local area. We never imagined what a wonderful community of connected young people the Naughton Scholarship programme would become.

"Our alumni are an incredible group working in the best Universities, research institutes and businesses across the world. Each year we hear back from them on the value of this network to them and the connections it has given them across disciplines and Ireland.  They are a wonderful group of young people that are all giving back to society in their own way that we are very proud to be connected with.”