A pair of Sixth Year students from Tipperary have won this year’s BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

19-year-olds Shane O’Connor and Liam Carew from the Abbey School in Tipperary won the event with their project, ‘Assessing the impact of second-level education on key aspects of adolescents’ life & development.’

The Minister for Education Norma Foley presented the prize to them at the RDS in Dublin this evening.

The pair will take home a €7,500 cash prize and will now go on to represent Ireland at the EU Contest for Young Scientists.

As part of their study, the pair surveyed 2,500 students and 220 teachers from schools all over the country over three years.

They aimed trying to assess the social, mental and physical effects of secondary school on different groups of students and came up with findings that could have real-world implications for policymakers, advisors, schools and pupils.