Sarah is minted after winning art competition
A TALENTED Fermoy schoolgirl has hit the jackpot, scooping top spot in a nationwide competition to design a special coin to mark the 75th anniversary of the Central Bank of Ireland.
Sarah Murphy, a fifth-year pupil at Coláiste an Chraoibhín, won overall senior section of the competition, which attracted more than 500 entries from primary and secondary schools across the country.
Their design brief was to design a coin, taking inspiration from people and/or events that have had make a significant and lasting impact on Irish society over the past three-quarters-ofa-century.
Not content with using just a single theme, the Rathcormac teenager’s stunning design managed to incorporate a variety of core combinations, with its central character of a honey bee representing our natural environment.
Drawing further inspiration from Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’, Sarah incorporated a pen and spade into her design, with joined hands around the border of the coin representing the solidarity of the Irish people – epitomised through the Yes vote in the 2015 marriage equality referendum.
A replica of Sarah’s coin will now go on public display in the Central Bank Visitor Centre for the summer, before taking pride of place on a display board at the Fermoy school.
Her art teacher Noel Sheehan and Coláiste principal Christy Healy travelled to Dublin on Tuesday to see Sarah presented with her winning prize of a €500 voucher by Central Bank governor Philip Lane.
Mr Sheehan said Sarah was a worthy winner of the competition, given the sheer amount of planning and hard work that went into her design.
“Her design was particularly complex and detailed and it is notoriously difficult to control working within a circular format. I was speaking to one of the competition judges and he said the panel was very impressed with Sarah’s design as it ticked all the boxes in terms of Irish society,” said Mr Sheehan.
“This is an incredible achievement for Sarah and the school. She is a talented artist with a great work ethic and we are all incredibly proud of what she has achieved,” he added.