Kinsale students honoured at Garda Youth Awards

TWO students from Kinsale Community School were awarded the Community Safety Award at the National Garda Youth Awards 2021 in recognition of their efforts to protect their community by providing PPE to those who needed it most at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The students, Shane Collins and Oisin Coyle, were involved in an initiative to produce and provide PPE to frontline healthcare workers both locally and nationally at the start of the pandemic.

Having already won a Garda Divisional Award in the Cork West, a huge achievement in its own right, the Kinsale students, were nominated to go forward to the national awards in recognition of how much their community values them.

Principal Fergal McCarthy said the whole school was incredibly proud of the pair.

“Producing 12,000 visors and rectifying a further 10,000 defective face masks in support of frontline healthcare workers at the beginning of the pandemic when there was a national crisis in respect of PPE demonstrated the student’s empathetic good nature as well as reflecting their sharp intellect and dynamic creativity.

“They showed that they are adept problem solvers, capable of working as a team, and they used these skills to focus on public good. These students reflect all that is good about bright, young, gifted people. We are proud at having this calibre of students attending Kinsale Community School.”

Collins added: “Oisin and I are delighted to receive this special award. It would not have been possible without the support of the school and all our teachers. We worked together as a team to support the community, those on the frontline and provide much-needed PPE”.

The first-ever Garda Divisional Youth Awards was founded by James O’Mahony, the local juvenile officer in West Cork in 1995.

The awards have grown since then and in 2019 Garda Commissioner Drew Harris launched the first-ever An Garda Síochána National Youth Awards.