Ronan scoops young inventor award

A fourth-class pupil from North Clare this week won a prestigious national award recognising independent thinking.
Ronan O’Connell, a pupil in Scoil Mhainchin, Ennistymon, was adjudicated the winner of the fourth to sixth class category of the National Junior Inventor competition run by the Patents Office.
The winners of the annual competition were announced on Monday, World Intellectual Property Day. It attracted more than 2,000 entries but Ronan’s idea for a safety sensor for electric cookers was cited as the top in his age group.
The sensor would be built into electric cooker rings and would automatically turn itself off if there was no saucepan on it for more than 50 seconds.
Ronan’s teacher, Veronica Clancy, first spoke to the school’s third and fourth-class pupils about the competition in September.
“The idea of the competition was thrown out in September. Ronan maintained his interest from then on and developed his idea before eventually entering before the Easter deadline. It was quite an achievement for Ronan. He entered not expecting to hear anything back from it and he won, so that was fantastic,” she said.
“Ronan is a very independent, solid kind of individual and I think he looked around him and thought, ‘well this sensor, this might be something of use’. I think he was specifically aiming the product at the elderly, although it would be useful in every home really,” she continued.
The competition was designed to reward originality and ingenuity and this is something Mrs Clancy believes Ronan has in abundance.
“Ronan amazed me on this. When you start thinking about this sort of competition it is very difficult to come up with anything really original. When Ronan told me about this, I realised I had never heard of anything similar. It was meant to be original and it was,” she concluded.
Ronan attended the awards ceremony in Kilkenny earlier this week. He was presented with a digital camera for himself and a digital microscope for the school by Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Conor Lenihan.
The junior inventor competition is aimed at primary school pupils to encourage children to be innovative and creative in finding solutions to everyday problems.
Minister Lenihan announced sixth class pupil Kevin Sorohan of Fermoyle National School, Lansborough, County Longford as the overall Junior Inventor Winner 2010.
Kevin’s winning invention is a seatbelt clasp light, which is situated in the push button of a seatbelt and will illuminate when the car lights are switched on to make it easier for the passengers to locate seat belt plugs in the dark.
Congratulating all the entrants on their hard work, Minister Lenihan said, “If Irish people are going to make important discoveries and inventions in the future, we are going to need more children to study science and maths. We must try and ensure that all our junior students continue their studies in science and maths at secondary school level.
“The quality of today’s competition entries shows that our juniors have great imagination and can look at problems and invent solutions.
“I would encourage all of you to keep entering competitions such as the junior inventor, whether you win or not. If you don’t win the award you hoped for, get advice from someone and try again next year. You never know what could happen,” he concluded.