SETU students, Darragh Brett and Matthew Heavy, took home first and second place respectively at the WorldSkills Ireland 2024 Joinery Competition at the RDS Simmonscourt in Dublin, from 25 to 27 September.
Darragh and Matthew are students on the Advanced Certificate Craft – Carpentry and Joinery facilitated by SETU under Generation Apprenticeship in partnership with SOLAS, the state agency responsible for Further Education and Training (FET) in Ireland.
World Skills 2024 winners
Frank Trench, SETU lecturer in BTech Construction Technology and Chief Examiner in Joinery at the World Skills competition, expressed his delight at the students’ success. He said, “Huge congratulations to Darragh, who won this years’ WorldSkills Ireland 2024 Joinery Competition, and to Matthew who took home second place. These are huge achievements for both students and for SETU overall. It reflects the outstanding skills and ability of the students, which have been enhanced by the training and tuition they’ve received on the University’s carpentry and joinery courses.”
Commitment and dedication
Frank expressed his personal satisfaction at witnessing the development of SETU’s apprentices. He commented, “It’s heartening to see the commitment and dedication of our carpentry and joinery apprentices and to see how they have developed and improved over the course of their training with us. To have this recognised also at national and international level via competitions such as WorldSkills, is even more encouraging for both staff and students.”
An enriching training landscape at SETU
Since 2022, Frank has held the role of Chief Examiner in joinery at WorldSkills Ireland. He has also held this role at the WorldSkills competition in Kasan, Russia in 2019, at WorldSkills Special Edition in Basel, Switzerland in 2022, and at WorldSkills 2024 in Lyon, France. Frank’s longstanding work with WorldSkills, alongside over 20 years of experience as lecturer and trainer, provides an invaluable and enriching landscape for apprentices at SETU. The university has provided facilities and training resources to students competing at national and international competitions over several years, fostering strong skills development opportunities at the university’s Kilkenny Road campus in Carlow.
SETU has a longstanding tradition of apprenticeship training across its campuses. In Carlow, the University provides Phase 4 and Phase 6 training in carpentry and joinery, instrumentation, and electrical instrumentation.
Generation Apprenticeship initiative
Generation Apprenticeship is a programme of structured education and training which formally combines and alternates learning in the workplace with learning in an education or training centre. It is a dual system, a blended combination of on-the-job employer-based training and off-the-job training.
For more information on Craft Apprenticeships at SETU, click here.
List of World Skills Ireland winners 2024 can be found here.