Catherine Clearymeets 10 people with projects, jobs and ideas that could change the way we live our lives.
ALYSON HOGG: SIMPLIFYING YOUR MAKE-UP
Alyson Hogg was selling food supplements on a shopping channel when she wondered if she could pack all the ingredients in the pills into a skin cream and start her own business. A former newscaster, she knows now that it was a pretty ridiculous idea. Trying to start your own skincare and make-up business from scratch, to compete with the international brands, was a nearly impossible task.
But the Dungiven woman, who is now based in Belfast, shelved plans for a PhD in the philosophy of psychology and started to visit labs and talk to chemists about manufacturing. It was "incredibly complex" and she realised that the packaging and marketing would be almost more important than the ingredients if she was to compete in the department stores with the giant brands. The Vita Liberata range of creams and make-up was born, and unlike many small skincare companies she did not head to the health food shops. "I wouldn't go into a healthfood shop to buy make-up I would go to a department store. So that's where we had to be." A make-up line has followed all based on the idea that one or two pots of her products will replace the bewildering array of bottles and tubes most women have in their bathrooms. Last year they launched eye shadows and a non-sticky lip gloss called Drench. For stockists see www.vitaliberata.com.
MARK LESLIE: TELLING VIRTUAL STORIES
"We use Irish storytelling talents to create Nintendo for snobs," Mark Leslie says of his work as a "narrative architect" for exhibitions, museums and great houses of Britain and Ireland.
Leslie, a member of the Monaghan family that owns Castle Leslie, trained as an architect and was working in London when computers began to feature in his work. In the mid-1980s his farm started working on interactive tours of buildings, and in mid-1985 they were among the first architects to dispense with drawing boards in their offices. In 1990 they made a virtual Luas run along computer-generated streets for Iarnród Éireann.
An interest in architecture was natural for "someone who was reared to the sound of breaking sash cords and dry rot". And where would you find more architectural purity than in the "cyber-bog", he reasons. He returned to Ireland in the early 1990s and began working for cultural institutions such as the Louth County Museum.
Last year, Martello Multi Media, of which Leslie is creative director, designed and installed a 300 sq m (3,228 sq ft) Irish pavilion at Expo 2005 in Japan, and researched and scripted the multimedia presentations. Martello's interactive onscreen questionnaire at the W5 science museum in Belfast feeds information on public attitudes back to the authorities. An adventure as an astronaut actually leads to questions about everyday health and life in Belfast.
ADRIAN LANGAN: SPINNING FOR A LIVING
"Well I don't have a beard," Adrian Langan says when he is asked if he is indeed the new Fergus Finlay of the Labour Party. The 28-year-old took over as chef-de-cabinet when Finlay stepped down to become Barnardos chief executive last year.
From Kiltimagh, Co Mayo (also the home town of Louis Walsh), Langan is a former president of the TCD Student's Union and was a member of Fianna Fáil while in college. "We all did crazy things as students." After graduating with a degree in history and politics he ran a campaign for the second Nice Referendum under the Irish Alliance for Europe, an umbrella organisation for a range of interest groups. The work earned him the accolade Young European of the Year.
He joined the Labour Party at the beginning of 2003 and was working as managing director of Bill O'Herlihy PR when he got a phone call from Pat Rabbitte to come in and discuss a job. When he realised Rabbitte was offering him the job as chief operations officer it took him "1.5 seconds" to accept it. When Fergus Finlay left in the summer, Langan moved into the bearded one's shoes in his role as chef-de-cabinet. His contract finishes the day the next Government comes into power. "After that I haven't a clue." The phoney campaign is over and real electioneering has been going on for the last six months of last year, he believes. "The starting pistol is well fired by now."
GEARÓID LYNCH: COOKING IN CAVAN
Time was when food snobs insisted that everything outside Dublin was one big dismal carvery of overcooked beef and boiled cabbage. But that has changed. Gearóid Lynch grew up some 20 miles from the village of Cloverhill in Cavan where he now owns and runs The Old Post Inn and strongly believes that his local clientele appreciates good food just as much as their city cousins.
After training in Killybegs and a stint in Dundalk, Lynch spent two years with Kevin Thornton in the late 1990s when Thornton's restaurant was still on the canal in Portobello. In 2000 he moved to Le Coq Hardi and worked there for the last year it was in business. That year he was named Bailey's Young Chef of the Year.
It had been a hectic year and he took three months off after Le Coq Hardi restaurant closed, returning home to Cavan to recuperate. Then he opened the Oak Rooms in Cavan town with a business partner. Over in Cloverhill the Old Post had been a restaurant for nearly 20 years, after serving its last day as a post office in 1974. Seven months after Lynch opened his restaurant in the old post office in November 2002 he was voted best newcomer in Georgina Campbell's guide to eating and travelling around Ireland. The high costs of employing four fully-trained chefs in his kitchen have started to pay off, and people now treat it as the place to go for a special occasion.
DARRAGH KIRBY AND ARAN MURRAY: BRINGING CARS AND DRIVERS CLOSER
Darragh Kirby (21) and Aran Murray (23) knew the sad fact that some people spend more time with their cars than with close members of their families. These two fourth-year students at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) put together an in-car accessory to further strengthen that bond that makes some drivers give their car a pet name.
The Opel Design Lab award was given for their OPal, an interactive system designed to make drivers understand their cars better. In a "life-like movement" the screen moves out of the dash and recognises the person in the driver seat, greeting them by name. You can ask it how the car is today, and the radio and CD player are linked to it with a personal DJ that "learns" your music tastes. A GPS function will also track your friends if they have GPS systems and finally the OPal will remind you of appointments and diary dates.
Graduating this year from the NCAD industrial design course, the two Dubliners hope to work in Ireland and then perhaps specialise in car design.
Their invention would recognise the voice and face of the different drivers of the car and personal information on the driver would be stored in the system's memory, leading to the possibility that one day your car will wish you a happy anniversary. It could be the only one to remember.
SEAN CONNICK: ASPIRING TO THE DÁIL
Sean Connick was 10 days away from his 13th birthday when he was knocked off his racing bike by the driver of a car and severely injured. After nine months of rehabilitation in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, he left in a wheelchair and says he "just got on with life".
Seven years ago if someone had told him he would be an election candidate he would have laughed, but the game of politics has slowly taken its hold, and the 41 year-old New Ross man is aiming to enter Leinster House as a TD in a wheelchair in 2007.
After school he went into business with his father in the family motor dealers. Later with his wife the couple set up a health club which they ran for 14 years. His current day job is in the storage and warehousing business.
In 1999 he was elected to New Ross town council on the first count. "As soon as I got involved in politics I realised how much I enjoyed it." In the 2004 local elections, he failed to make it through at the Fianna Fáil selection convention and then found himself added to the ticket just four weeks from the election. The phrase "that's politics" was uttered to him several times after his defeat at convention.
The wheelchair makes "mostly no difference" to how people relate to him, he believes. He has not focused on disability issues, although he did serve on a disability committee for two years. He believes local issues such as schools, the plight of sugar beet growers and infrastructure in the county will dominate at the next campaign.
MARIA McCORMACK: SENDING LIVESTOCK ABROAD
A year ago she was managing the January sales in Miss Selfridge's but in the past year Maria McCormack has shipped more than 1,000 animals from Limerick to poorer countries around the world. It was a fast learning experience for the 23-year-old from Corbally in Limerick, who admits that with no farming background she "really didn't know one end of a heifer from the other".
Several charities now base their Christmas fundraising campaigns on the idea of donations in the form of livestock or equipment to the developing world. But it was the Limerick charity Bóthar that first began sending livestock to African farmers, to give them more than just a once-off cash donation.
McCormack co-ordinated seven airlifts of Fresian heifers, all in calf, to Kosovo and Albania during the year. The seven flights contained 500 animals in total. A further 600 goats were sent to Zambia and Tanzania. Until BSE restrictions are lifted, cattle cannot be sent to African countries.
McCormack co-ordinates import permits, expert licences and arranges halters, medicinal doses from the vets and ramps for loading the animals, as well as liaising with an aircraft charter expert to get flights organised. "We collect all the animals on the same day and they are brought to Kilmallock in Limerick. They have a couple of hours' rest and then they are flown out that night."
Farmers call into the office and look for the "girl who looks after the shipments". As well as helping her to understand the world of farming she has been impressed by their generosity. Very few give just one animal; two farmers each gave 15 cattle during the year. www.bothar.ie.
PAT O'SULLIVAN: TURNING TO WOOD
A coal importer since 1979 Pat O'Sullivan is now a man with an eye to the future. His coal business is still booming but he has set up a separate arm selling wood-burning stoves and boilers for a day when fossil fuels become too expensive. "I always had an interest in wood as a fuel and started bringing wood pellets into Ireland. With the scarcities in oil and gas and coal in the same energy basket the potential for wood was huge. The Scandinavian countries led the way."
He believes that up to 1,000 people have changed over to wood-burning boilers and stoves to heat their homes and businesses in the past year. Around 200 have done so through his company which aims to import stoves and boilers directly. The company also offers a delivery service for wood pellets, which are used in boilers, and kiln-dried hardwood logs for use in stoves or ordinary fireplaces.
The technology has the potential to halve heating costs when wood pellets are produced in enough volume in Ireland. "Also we could produce our own fuel whereas at the moment we import in excess of 95 per cent of our energy." Changing to wood pellet boiler for an average-size house would cost in the region of €4,300. O'Sullivan says a lot of people are combining a convection stove with oil-fired central heating to reduce their oil use. He has made a submission to government asking for VAT to be taken off wood fuels. www.greenheat.ie.
PROF BRIAN McCRAITH: MAKING SELF-DIAGNOSIS ACCURATE
They call it "the beady eye" around the campus of Dublin City University. But the €22.5 million Biomedical Diagnostics Institute (BDI, get it?) could change the way people diagnose illnesses.
Heading the unit is the son of two primary school teachers from Dundalk, Prof Brian McCraith. His sensor research could lead to the next wave of multinational investment in Ireland, according to a spokesman for DCU.
The BDI has a five-year plan to develop a home diagnostic system whereby people could detect their own illnesses long before symptoms are apparent. If the technology is developed as expected a patient could breathe on a sensor or dab some sweat or saliva on a plastic chip instead of going to their doctor for blood tests. The chip would then be inserted into a device like a mobile phone in their home and the information transmitted to the lab. The results could be on their doctor's desk next morning.
McCraith went into sensor research after graduating from Galway University where he studied physics through Irish. He joined DCU after a spell in Dundalk Institute of Technology. In 2005, the unit screened more than 600 patients in Beaumont Hospital for colon cancer.