Applications are open for the Cian Mooney Future Leaders Programme 2024 for first- and second-year Kildalton students.

Students apply through the college and are then interviewed in mid-May.

The programme was established by Kilkenny Irish Farmer's Association (IFA) in memory of Cian Mooney, a dairy student in Kildalton who lost his life in a car accident in April 2022.

Opportunity

The scholarship is part-funded by Kilkenny IFA and part-funded by the Mooney family.

The all-inclusive trip as part of the programme gives the students the opportunity to travel with the IFA to Brussels to the European Parliament in October, where they will see the policy-making process and debate these with the policy makers.

Former Kilkenny IFA chair Jim Mulhall said: “It is important that students who potentially have a career in farming understand how policy and legislation from Europe has an impact on their farms.”

'Massive eyeopener'

Last year, four students travelled to Brussels in October with the IFA and Cian Mooney’s father Éamon. They met MEPs, European Commissioner Mairéad McGuinness, visited the Irish embassy in Brussels and CEJA, the European Council of Young Farmers.

Danny Doyle, a scholarship recipient last year, said that it was a “massive eyeopener to all that goes on in Brussels”, and, on a personal level, he said it was a “massive confidence boost to stand up and ask hard questions on particular issues”.