Tallaght’s Erica Redmond (6) crowned this year’s Doodle 4 Google winner

There was happiness all around for six-year-old Erica Redmond from Scoil Carmel in Firhouse when she was crowned the overall winner of this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition this afternoon.

Erica’s winning doodle ‘My Happy Robot Tom’ beat off stiff competition from over 4,000 students across Ireland to win this year’s competition.

Erica’s winning Doodle will now be seen by millions of visitors to the Google Ireland homepage on Friday, April 7th next.

In a grand final ceremony in Google’s EMEA headquarters in Dublin, Erica was today presented with her award, as well as a €5,000 scholarship towards her third-level studies and a Chromebook.

Erica’s school, Scoil Carmel Junior School will also receive a €10,000 technology grant, while her teacher Ms Lea will also receive a Chromebook. 

This year’s theme “If I could create anything it would be…” gave students the ability to use their imagination as much as they wanted to create their doodle.

Erica’s winning doodle, called “My Happy Robot Tom” was designed by Erica to be her companion. 

Erica explained: “I designed a happy robot called Tom to help with my chores and be my friend. Tom is always happy and loves to play games with me.

Picture by Conor McCabe

“I gave him multi-coloured legs because I love rainbows. I used all the letters from Google as parts of my robot 0 the G’s are ears, the O’s are eyes and the L and E are my robots power switches connected with curly cables.” 

Speaking at the Grand Final, Fionnuala Meehan, VP and head of Google Ireland said: “It’s been a fantastic year for the our Doodle 4 Google competition, which continues to grow every year. 

“We’re always blown away by the standard of entries we receive and this year was no exception. It was great to see such creativity and innovation in the entries we received which made it very difficult for our judges and for the public who vote for our group winners.”

“Almost half a million public votes were cast and lots of communities across Ireland got behind our finalists which was tremendous.

“Congratulations to Erica and to all our finalists; I want to thank all the students who entered and their teachers and parents who support them in doing so every year.”  

Students from Gaelscoil na Giuise in Firhouse also done their school and hometown proud after they were shortlisted from thousands of entries to be listed among 75 finalists.