County Meath raises the bar as 2010 Naughton Scholarships awarded

The Naughton Foundation has awarded two Meath students with third-level scholarships in the fields of engineering, science and technology at a ceremony in Trinity College, Dublin. Minister Mary Hanafin, along with the founding patron of the Naughton Foundation, Dr Martin Naughton, was on hand to present winning students with their awards. The exemplary Meath students to be awarded scholarships by the Naughton Foundation at Saturday night's ceremony were Robert Paul Whelan from St Patrick's Classical School, Navan, who was awarded first place and will study theoretical physics at Trinity College, and Kevin Daly of St Ciaran's Community School, Kells, who also will attend Trinity, and who was awarded the silver medal. Established in January 2008, the Naughton Foundation scholarships are a scheme of bursaries introduced to promote the study of engineering, science and technology in any publicly funded university or third-level institution in Ireland, including Northern Ireland. The scholarship initially served counties Louth, Meath and Monaghan but has since expanded to include Donegal and Mayo. This year is the first year that County Cavan entered the programme. The first place award in each county is worth €4,000 for each year of that student's third-level course. The second place award is €2,000 and the school of each winning students will receive a prize of €1,000 towards the school's science laboratory. The Naughton Foundation also announced that from 2011, students attending recognised secondary schools in County Sligo and Leitrim are also eligible to apply for a scholarship. Full details on the Naughton Foundation Scholarship Programme are available on the Foundation's website www.thenaughtonfoundation.ie