Announcement of Shortlisted Essays

The Regional Writing Centre is delighted to announce our shortlist of winners for the Ninth Annual National Secondary School Essay Writing Competition. Due to the low number of submissions this year, we are combining the categories of transition year and fifth year, meaning there is one overall winner and two runners up. All who have submitted essays to us this year should be very proud of all the hard work and dedication put in. As always, the Regional Writing Centre thanks you for your participation.

Regrettably, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and our inability to predict when we can return to the university as normal, we are not currently in a position to go ahead with the planned official ceremony for the winners on May 27^th.

Prizes and certificates will be distributed once the UL campus is again functional. At the moment, we have no access to the campus and it is not yet known when we will return. If the situation improves significantly in the coming weeks and months, we may potentially organise an alternate date for the ceremony in the coming autumn semester; otherwise, we will post the prizes and certificates to the winners.

The President of UL, Dr. Des Fitzgerald, Vice President, Academic and Student Affairs, Prof. Kerstin Mey and the Centre for Transformative Learning team join the RWC in expressing our regret that the pandemic has prevented from celebrating with the winners in May.

Congratulations to our top three essay writers for 2019/20:

• Overall winner: Emma T. Evers, Leinster Senior College, Newbridge, Co. Kildare. (Winner of an Android tablet).
• Runner-up: Niamh Coyle, Royal and Prior Comprehensive School, Raphoe, Co. Donegal (€100 OneForAll voucher).
• Runner-up: Paul Egan, Mean Scoil Nua an Leith Triuigh, Tralee, Co. Kerry. (€100 OneForAll voucher)

Finally, we reiterate our gratitude to all competition entrants who worked so hard on their essays. Thank you too to all of our Readers/Judges for volunteering for the weeks of reading and taking on the difficult work of selecting winners from a large number of very good essay submissions. A list of our essay judges has been included below.

Míle buíochas

Nikita Basovs—2^nd Year  BSc Mobile Communications and Security

Gemma Wyley—3^rd Year BSc Physiotherapy

Joanne McCormack – 1st Year BA English and Communication

Manish Chaudhary – 1^st Year MSc Project Management

Bart Ryan—2^nd Year BA Psychology and Philosophy