Donna Toal is not the campaigning type. The nearest she has come in the past to activism of any kind is helping her dad deliver leaflets door-to-door for their local residents' association in Monaghan.
But the 17-year-old Leaving Certificate student recently stood out when she launched a petition protesting at the leniency of the three-year prison sentence given to paedophile Vincent McKenna.
McKenna (37) was found guilty in Cavan Circuit Court last month of 31 counts of indecent and sexual assault against his daughter, Sorcha, when she was aged between four and 13.
A self-styled human rights campaigner, McKenna was based in Belfast in recent years. His family still live on the outskirts of Monaghan, near Donna's home.
Sorcha (19) is a first-year student at NUI Galway and a past pupil of St Louis Secondary School, which Donna attends.
Within a week of McKenna's imprisonment, Donna and her classmates spent a day rounding up 350 signatures from students at the 900-pupil school. They handed in the petition, which demands a longer sentence for McKenna and paedophiles generally, with its signatures to the local courthouse.
The campaign is gathering pace and the organisers hope to get 200,000 signatures, which Sorcha will present to the Government next week.
Donna, who wants to study childcare after she leaves school, says the strong support for the campaign shows that many young people are "disgusted" by sentences such as McKenna's.
"It's important for politicians to listen to us because we are the next generation of voters and if the Government doesn't listen, young people just won't vote," she says.
Sorcha and her supporters were outraged when Judge Matthew Deery imposed the three-year sentence on McKenna last month. One man attacked McKenna as he was led from court. Sorcha, who waived her right to anonymity so that her father could be named, burst into tears.
She says he could be released after 18 months and should have been sentenced to between five and eight years.
"I'm very angry about the sentence and I feel that the system let me down," she says.
"The fact that I coped so well and that the abuse could have been worse were two major factors that went against me, and I thought that was insulting."
Many of Sorcha's relatives are involved in gathering signatures for the petition. It demands mandatory 10-year sentences for paedophiles and a review of McKenna's sentence.
Her grandmother, Ms Mary McCleary, has been drumming up support in shops and businesses in Monaghan.
In Bandon, Co Cork, her uncle, Mr Tom McCleary, and his wife, Jane, have posted petitions to 580 schools, colleges and universities. He said he has received hundreds of supportive phone calls since he spoke about the campaign on RTE radio this week.
"The amount of venom out there towards paedophiles and sentencing and the judiciary is unbelievable," he says. "So many child abusers are getting off leniently in Ireland and this is a way of doing something about it."
Mr McCleary said many of the phone calls have been from grandmothers concerned for their grandchildren.
"One lady was 68 and she was abused as a child and never told anybody and she cried on the phone. A good quarter of the people ringing have been in tears and a lot of them said that it was great that Sorcha had come out."
Sorcha, who has suffered intermittently from depression and has made several suicide attempts, says the authorities should listen to the public on this issue.
"Maybe it's too late now for me to change anything, and I do feel the system has let me down. But if I thought that some change would come about for other people, it would be of some comfort to me."
Anyone wishing to support the petition can contact 023-41364 or mccleary@ireland.com/ mcleary@eircom.net/ soxy@oxygen.ie/ pacheeky@oceanfree.com