Special Achievement Award for Roscommon brothers at enterprise national finals

Twin brothers from Roscommon Town won the Special Achievement Award at this year’s Student Enterprise Programme national finals held last week in Mullingar.

Isaac and George Naughton, students at Roscommon Community College, worked under the guidance of their teacher, Denise Staunton, and developed ‘“Beo go Deo”, an innovative Irish lifestyle brand creating natural flavoured beverages using sustainably sourced ingredients.

Also representing the county in the senior category of this year’s competition were Darragh Conroy and Oisin Connolly, also from Roscommon Community College, with their project “Split Smart”. Both groups were honoured at the county Student Enterprise Awards in Roscommon in March.

This year’s event was hosted by broadcasters Rick O’Shea and Roscommon Town native Ruth Scott, and they were joined during the ceremony by Alan Dillon, Minister of State for Employment, Small Business and Retail to announce the winners across the three main categories on the day.

Speaking at the awards, Minister Alan Dillon said: “The awards represent one for the great days for Irish entrepreneurship in the country. We get a chance to see almost 90 businesses started by secondary school students from across the country who have all been shortlisted for the finals and that in itself is an amazing achievement from the 30,000 pupils who started last September.

“These are students who have come up with brilliant ideas and forged them into businesses, making sales and understanding and learning the skills it takes to become an entrepreneur. No matter what path they choose in life those skills will stand by them, but we hope that many of the students we see today will go on to become the start-up leaders and entrepreneurs of the future in this country.” 

In all, there were 88 student businesses featuring dynamic and innovative business ideas in contention across three main categories for the final in what is Ireland’s largest entrepreneurship programme for second level students.

Speaking following the awards, Enda Cannon, acting head of enterprise at Roscommon County Council, said: “Year-on-year the Student Enterprise Programme continues to showcase the very best of innovation and entrepreneurship amongst our secondary school students.

“We see every year that the national finals are not an end point for our student entrepreneurs, but a stepping stone on the next stage of their entrepreneurial journey. From our class of 25/26 we hope to see some of our next great wave of Roscommon business leaders and global entrepreneurs emerge.

“I’d like to warmly congratulate all of our students from County Roscommon who represented us, not only at this year’s national awards but also our students and their teachers who participated in our county awards earlier this year. The standard of business innovation and entrepreneurship is in very good hands as we look to the future,” Mr Cannon remarked.