In 2014, Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow from Kinsale Community School, Cork, won the Google Science Fair for a project that explored how natural bacteria can increase crop output.

Using a naturally occurring bacteria in soil called Diazotroph, they found that the germination of barley and oats could increase by 50% and dry mass yield by 74%. They won the BT Young Scientist Exhibition for their research and went on to top the EU Contest for Young Scientists.

Their ground-breaking discovery could help improve food production worldwide without the use of GMO.

However, speaking on Newstalk’s Right Hook yesterday, the girls said their research wasn’t initially taken seriously.

“It was being overlooked,” said Sophie. “We went to the top researchers and they told us it wouldn’t work but it wasn’t done before. If you’ve never done it, how do you know?"

The students are all aged 17 and plan to continue with their research. Hook, who admitted he was “kind of afraid” of the girls, asked if they had a normal life.

“It was stuff we worked really hard for but it doesn’t fully define us. We have completely normal lives. We just look at seeds a lot,” said Ciara.

Emer added that Irish people need to become more confident when it comes to promoting their own work.

“There are some amazing projects in the BT Young Scientist but people don’t have the confidence in them. If you were in the states, you’d be acting like the smartest kid in the country,” said Emer. “I think Irish people need to realise that we can do incredible things.”