The former leader of the Labour Party won his first Caltex prize at the age of 10. "Then I was doing it without realising I was good at it. By the time I was a teenager it was central to my life., writes Catherine Foley

Ruairí Quinn

It was like an emotional diary. I was painting dances, hops, relationships. I painted constantly, right through until I was about 27 or 28. I ran out of time . . . . Politics took over." He won three first prizes and one second prize as a pupil at Blackrock College in Dublin, under the tutelage of "a wonderful teacher" called John Coyle. When he left school, he recalls, "I was torn between architecture and art." (He chose the latter.) With his £10 first prize, at the age of 10, he bought a second-hand bicycle, an illustrated book about the second World War and sweets. The competition and the prizes were "immensely important", he says. "Ireland was an introverted and isolated place. Anything like that took on enormous significance."

Clare Boylan

The writer remembers she was between eight and 12 when she won a prize in the Caltex competition. "We were all great drawers, myself and my two sisters. My mother was very encouraging. She painted one wall in the kitchen black so that we could draw to life-size with chalk. We were a competitive family, and she always encouraged us to show off our talents. What did I paint? I was always interested in people and girls and animals and houses, so I painted those. At school I was always getting into trouble because I drew along the margins of my jotter." She doesn't paint

much now, she says, but intends to begin again soon.

David Begg

The general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions was about eight when he won a prize. "I've no recollection of winning, but I can remember attempting to find the Texaco office and dropping it [his entry\] off in O'Connell Street, I think." He doesn't draw or paint now. "Whatever brains or talent I had for painting have long been lost," he says wryly. "I think I'm a bit of a philistine."

Bernadette Madden

The artist vividly recalls the day she won the top award, in 1966, when she was a student at Maryfield College in Dublin. "I still have the painting now, because my mother kept it," she says. "I was amazed. It was a painting of women in Moore Street. I went down and did drawings on the spot and then came home and painted it." Winning "meant that somebody thought I was good. It did confirm for me that I was on the right path. I only entered the competition twice. I got a merit the previous year". After school Madden studied at the National College of Art and Design. She believes her painting won because it had "some kind of vibrancy about it". She still has the invitation to the awards ceremony and the menu from the Gresham Hotel, "which was the poshest hotel at the time. I'd never been out for lunch then. It was so sophisticated. My memory is that the winners sat together and the parents sat at another table". Her prize of £75 "was quite a lot of money", she says. "An astonishing amount of people who are now artists were winners."

Terry Prone

The publicist and writer says the Caltex contest was a highlight of the year from the time she was seven. "At first it was because Hilary, my older sister, painted, and very well too. But then drawing just took me over. In school I was always in dead trouble, because my books had ballerinas on their tippy-toes in the margins or horses on the title pages. At home I drew in pencil on the Formica kitchen table - my mother said she hated cleaning the drawings off at night. My mother would pick the paintings or charcoal sketches that weren't torn, dirty or missing in action and send them off each year. She still has the certificates, notification of which prize I won and invitations to the awards ceremonies stored away. I remember being able to almost handicap the opposition. You'd always know the names that would turn up. The Mansfield sisters - Thelma and Louise - tended to figure."The winners stand in line, waiting for their names to be called out. Their young faces already hint at how they will be as adults: the dreamy ones, the proud ones, the feisty ones, the timid ones, the brilliant ones.

The Texaco Children's Art Competition, which claims to be Ireland's longest-standing sponsor of the arts, has been awarding prizes to young Irish people since 1955. Ruairí Quinn, the former Labour Party leader, Clare Boylan, the writer, Eithne Tinney, the conductor, and David Begg, the general secretary of ICTU, all won prizes as children. Artists who've won include Robert Ballagh, Graham Knuttel, Dorothy Cross, Janet Mullarney and Bernadette Madden.

For many winners it was a marker in their lives, a day of celebration that heightened their confidence and self-esteem.

With 40,000 entries a year, the competition has become an Irish institution. Texaco, which spends €500,000 a year on the event, including a prize fund of about €20,000, runs no competition like it in any other country.

About 70 per cent of entries are submitted by schools; the remaining entries come from children whose parents probably picked up entry forms at the company's petrol stations.

"It is one of the most precious things I've ever been involved in," says Don Hall, who helps Texaco to publicise the competition. "I saw back in the 1960s the significance of it for children. Kids in their imagination are no more or no less sophisticated than they were 50 years ago."

Eoghan O'Keeffe, a 15-year-old student at Gorey Community School, in Co Wexford, has already topped his category - the prizes are awarded by age - in two years' events. "It was a great boost to win," he says. "I wasn't really sure how good other people were. This put it in perspective a bit."

Another winner, Emma Brannigan, who is now a student of industrial design at the National College of Art and Design, was the overall winner in 2001 when at Mount Sackville School, in west Dublin. She says the competition was important to her because it showed other people that art should be valued and "that it's not just a hobby".

Entries are submitted in seven age categories. They undergo a preliminary judging by a panel that includes three art experts. Declan McGonagle, director of City Arts Centre in Dublin, judges the final winners. "Even the most familiar subject can be presented in a new way by an original approach," he says. "This freshness of approach is especially visible in the younger categories, where imaginations are freest . . . . The most creative work is to be found among the younger age groups." As for the older contestants, "it's very clear that winning encourages them to go on and to do it more seriously," he says.

The overall winner receives €2,000 in cash and a €1,500 commission from UTV, whose director of television is also a preliminary judge, to produce a work for the station's collection.

There's a wonderful sensitivity and a quality of perception in a child's drawing, according to Eoin Butler, a member of the judging panel for 15 years and head of the visual-art department at St Patrick's College in Dublin.

"It gives me a great yardstick of what's happening in the country. There are times when I feel really uplifted and other times when I feel let down because perhaps the motivation was lacking.

"Every piece of work is a winner. It should be taken at face value. The sincerity of the work and the sentiment, you can perceive that very, very quickly. There's a sense where you really feel that this is the child's own work. There are occasions when you feel there has been an adult's influence on it."

Since the 1950s the winning work has been brought on tour. In the beginning, when it was known as the Caltex Children's Art Competition, the work was displayed in school halls. Over the years the event's importance has grown, and last yearthe work went on view at venues such as the Helix, in Dublin, and the Ulster Museum, in Belfast.

Along with the prizes and special-merit awards, there is the competition calendar to look forward to later in the year; it is sent to schools, featuring the winners and their work.

Catherine Southern, an art teacher at St John's Special School in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, which has won awards in the category for children with special needs, says: "Winning has really boosted the school and the community."

The closing date for this year's competition is February 20th. You can find out more by visiting www.texaco.ie/childart