Kells and Trim doodles in running for Google contest

Four young artists from Meath have been chosen as county finalists in the first 'Doodle 4 Google" competition to design a doodle for internet search engine Google"s home page for St Patrick"s Day. The competition was open to all primary and secondary students in the Republic of Ireland, who were asked to create a doodle based on the theme 'My Ireland". From time to time, Google changes its logo for special occasions or to mark events and these are known as doodles. The drawings are designed on, around and through the Google logo on the web engine"s home page. Matthew Cleary (5) and Niamh Donnelly (11) from St Mary"s Convent Primary school, Trim, and Meabh McKenna (13) and Claire Dunne (17) of Eureka Secondary School, Kells, are the finalists from Meath. The 103 county winners are now battling it out online for the public vote which will help them go through to the next round of the competition. Four finalists will be selected with the assistance of the public online vote and then one of these four will be chosen as the overall winner by Google"s master doodler, Denis Hwang, who is the man responsible for many of Google"s doodles on its homepage. The winning doodle will appear on the Google homepage in Ireland, the UK, Australia, Canada and the United States on St Patrick"s Day. The four national finalists and their teachers will each receive a laptop. The overall winning doodle will be seen by millions of internet users and the winner"s school will receive a €10,000 technology grant. Adele Cooper of Google Ireland said: 'The Google homepage is viewed by millions of people every day and there is a chance that the St Patrick"s Day doodle could be the work of a young Meath artist if the public go online in support of Matthew, Niamh. Meabh and Claire.' She added: 'We were very impressed by the creativity and talent behind the entries for Doodle 4 Google in Ireland. Our judging panel had an extremely tough time reducing almost 2000 entries from 950 schools down to 103 county winners and now we need the public"s help to select the four national finalists in each age group. We hope the public will go online to the Doodle 4 Google website and take a look at the fantastic work of Meath"s young talent and then vote for their favourite doodle. I would like to congratulate Matthew, Niamh, Meabh, Claire and all the county winners on reaching this stage of the competition'. To vote go to www.google.ie/doodle4google/