Two Tipperary students clinch top spot in 2020 Student Enterprise Awards

Two Tipperary students are celebrating this morning after picking up the top prize at the national Student Enterprise Awards.

Daniel Ruddy and Jack O’Meara from Thurles CBS won the senior category for their ‘Handy Hose Holder’, designed to allow easier access to wash down hoses in the milking parlour.

Jack says that demand has been strong for the product:

“We’d about 200 sold and then the coronavirus came and everything kind of went down for a few weeks there. But now we’re getting it back into shops and everything is starting to pick up a bit.

“We actually got endorsed by David Russell, Farmer of the Year last year – he bought two of them off us. He started using them on his farm. He said they were good.

“They were tested down in Teagasc in Cork and we got positive feedback from them and they helped us clean up the design.”

Daniel has told Tipp FM that he came up with the idea when he was working on the farm with his father:

“We’ve tried to use it for other ideas as well. On our Instagram, we’ve also used it for holding a brush, so it stops you bending down to pick up the brush as well and we’ve other ways of using it too.

“Hopefully now we can try and find more new ideas for it.”