Waterford Apprentices and Student to represent Ireland at the Skills Olympics

Waterford apprentices Adam Flynn (Industrial Millwright Mechanic) Luke O’Keefe (Building Information Modelling) and student Hanna Mathe (Cookery) will represent Ireland at the 45th WorldSkills Competition, the skills Olympics, in Kazan, Russia in August 2019.
The Irish young people, all under 25 years, have proven expertise in their chosen field having competed against their peers to secure their places at the Competition. Adam, Luke and Hanna and their fellow team members were selected from the winners of the National Skills Competition Finals which were held in March 2019.
They will showcase their skills and talents in the areas of Aircraft Maintenance, Beauty Therapy, Cabinetmaking, Cookery, Construction Metal Work, Electrical Installations, Joinery, Plumbing and Heating, Restaurant Service, Welding, Freight Forwarding, Visual Merchandising, Cloud Computing, Brick-Laying, Industrial Millwright Mechanic and Building Information Modelling.
Competitors, who come from Donegal, Waterford, Cavan, Kerry, Wexford, Offaly, Kildare, Galway, Longford, Dublin, Limerick, Roscommon, Kilkenny and Cork have been in training for the past ten weeks under the direction of their coaches. The team has been training in TU Dublin, the Institutes of Technology (CIT, LIT, WIT, DKIT, IT Carlow & AIT) and education and training board colleges (Kerry ETB, Waterford Wexford ETB, Limerick Clare ETB, Donegal ETB, Dublin Dún Laoghaire ETB) and Shannon College of Hotel Management.
The WorldSkills Competition, which is held every two years, is the world’s largest professional education event. Approximately 1,600 competitors from 60 countries will compete in 56 different skills and disciplines in Russia. All competitors will demonstrate technical abilities both individually and collectively to execute specific tasks for which they study and/or perform in their workplace.