Ballybofey pupil secures Inaugural Coillte Forestry Scholarship

Ballybofey’s Áine O’Dwyer has been named one of many inaugural students of Coillte’s 2025 Forestry Scholarship Programme.

Áine joins Mia Sibbald (Kildare) and Alex Energy (Waterford), now of their first semester at South East Technological College (SETU) and already benefiting from the programme.

“This scholarship has given me greater than monetary help—it has offered a pathway right into a sector that’s key to tackling local weather challenges and supporting rural Eire,” Áine stated. “My introduction to SETU has been improbable, as we start to study concerning the sensible features of sustainable forestry and its potential to foster a greener, brighter future.”

With CAO functions open, Coillte launched its 2025 programme. Constructing on the success of its inaugural programme, which noticed scholarships being awarded to a few college students, the scholarship gives substantial monetary and profession help for college kids pursuing a full-time, third stage forestry programme at College School Dublin (UCD) or SETU.

Providing as much as €20,000 per recipient throughout their diploma, alongside paid summer season placements and profession alternatives with Coillte, the scholarship was created to handle the rising want for expert professionals to help Eire’s environmental and financial sustainability.

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The launch of the 2025 Forestry Scholarship comes amid rising curiosity in forestry careers, as revealed by a current RED C survey commissioned by Coillte. This survey discovered that 60% of 18–34-year-olds view a profession within the forest and wooden sector as engaging, with over 1 / 4 of all these surveyed describing it as very engaging. Moreover, 57% of ladies surveyed expressed curiosity in a profession in forestry, highlighting the sector’s broadening enchantment throughout numerous demographics.

The forestry sector is recognised as a key driver of Eire’s local weather motion goals, requiring greater than 1,700 expert professionals by 2030 to satisfy the ambitions of Eire’s Forest Technique.

Launching the 2025 Coillte Forestry Scholarship programme, Mark Carlin, Managing Director of Coillte Forest, stated: “Forestry is crucial to Eire’s environmental and financial future, providing numerous careers in all kinds of areas. With CAO functions now open, we encourage college students to contemplate forestry as a significant profession that contributes to a greener, extra self-sufficient Eire.

“Forestry isn’t just about planting and harvesting bushes – it’s a dynamic, multifaceted sector. There may be a variety of careers out there, together with planners who use subtle data know-how to develop strategic forest administration plans, ecologists working to guard and improve biodiversity throughout our property, supply-chain managers working to co-ordinate the provision of sustainable wooden merchandise, and recreation managers delivering trails and actions for folks to take pleasure in. Sustainability is on the coronary heart of forestry as we speak and technological innovation continues to rework the forest sector.”

Purposes for the 2025 Coillte Forestry Scholarship Programme are actually open and extra data may be discovered on-line. The deadline for functions is Friday, Could 2, 2025.