We should shine a light on our young people, they rightly deserve it

SIR,

If anyone needed reasons to be proud of Irish teenagers, there were nearly 7,500 of them on display at the RDS in Dublin last week. It was an impressive display of brains, drive, commitment, intelligence and imagination.

It was the annual BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. And it was a cracker this year!

There’s news all the time about how teens are causing trouble. Underage drinking and drug abuse stories are easy to find in any of Ireland’s newspapers.

I think it’s time to focus on the good and earnest intentions of all those boys and girls who brought their ideas and promise to the RDS this year. Take a heap of Irish pride in their singular and collective achievements.

For example: the winner, Adam Kelly, a fifth year student from Skerries Community College in Dublin won with his project ‘Optimizing the stimulation of general quantum circuits’. Along with that mouthful comes a cash prize of €7,500. And now he will represent Ireland at the upcoming European Young Scientists competition. He’s 17-years-old.

Aoife Morris and Tianha Williams won the group award for a project called ‘Developing and organic solar cell coating solution to mitigate fossil fuels usage by motor vehicles’. At 16-years-of-age, these two young ladies are thinking clearly and well-ahead for a cleaner environment.

Teenagers, in time, become adults and they are the future of this Republic. These young scientists and all similarly disposed teenagers should be in the newspapers all the time.

We should be shouting about them and their aspirations every week. They should be the example, not the exception, as to how teens should conduct themselves.

Put them on the front pages. Relegate the miscreants, trouble-makers and ne’erdo-wells to the back pages. Shine the light on those who rightly deserve it, Sincerely,

Tom Cahill

Ballinskelligs