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Tag Archives: Ballyfermot College of Further Education (Dublin)


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Birth of Nora Twomey, Animator, Director & Screenwriter

Nora Twomey, Irish animator, director, screenwriter, producer and voice actress, is born on October 31, 1971, in Cork, County Cork. She is best known as the co-founder of Cartoon Saloon, alongside Tomm Moore and Paul Young, an animation studio and production company, based in Kilkenny, County Kilkenny.

Twomey is educated at St. Mary’s Secondary School in Midleton, County Cork but leaves before completing the Leaving Certificate at the age of fifteen. She does manual labor at a local factory but continues to draw and briefly studies fine art before she is admitted to Ballyfermot Senior College in Dublin to their School of Animation program on the basis of her portfolio. In the factory she operates a conveyor belt for up to twelve hours on end during the night shift. She credits this period of her life to much of her success, as she wears headphones to drown out the loud noise of machinery, the silence combined with the monotony of the task she performs allows her to ponder concepts and generate ideas, many of which are put to film later in her life.

After graduating from Ballyfermot Senior College in 1995, Twomey begins to work for Brown Bags Film, an animation studio in Dublin. In 1999, she helps found Cartoon Saloon, along with Tomm Moore, Paul Young and Ross Murray. In 2002, she directs the award-winning short animated film From Darkness. The short film has no dialogue and is based on an Inuit folk tale where a man helps a woman with only a skeleton for a body to regenerate. She also works on the successful animated TV series Skunk Fu!.

Twomey goes on to write and direct the animated short Cúilín Dualach (Backwards Boy), released in 2004. Based on a story by Jackie Mac Donacha, a boy with his head on backwards finds only love and acceptance in his mother and has to work to gain that from the rest of his community but most of all his father.

Twomey co-directs, with Tomm Moore, The Secret of Kells, an animated feature film as well as doing additional voice acting for the film. The film is set in 9th century Ireland, at the time when the Book of Kells is written. In it, a 12-year-old orphan boy living at a monastery has the task of finishing a book with the art of illumination. The film premieres at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2009. The Secret of Kells is nominated in the category of Best Animated Feature Film at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Twomey continues to work on feature films with Cartoon Saloon with 2014’s Song of the Sea directed by Tomm Moore. She works as the film’s head of story and voice director.

Twomey next directs the animated film The Breadwinner, released in 2017. Based on the best-selling young adult novel by Deborah Ellis, an 11-year-old girl named Parvana must dress as a boy and become the titular breadwinner for her family when her father is wrongfully arrested by the Taliban. It premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017 with a wide release in November 2017. It is the first feature-length film she has sole director credit on. She works on the project with actress Angelina Jolie, who helps fund the project and works as an executive producer. The project is a huge success for Twomey, as she is recognized as a solo female filmmaker, and given accolades as well as being lauded by many as a source of female empowerment, all while battling cancer during production. During the development of The Breadwinner, she is named in Variety‘s “2017 10 Animators to Watch.”

Twomey is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Twomey becomes the seventh graduate of Ballyfermot Senior College to be nominated for an Academy Award with her work on The Breadwinner when it is nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 90th Academy Awards. She is also nominated for an award at the Golden Globe Awards.

The Breadwinner earns ten nominations at the 45th Annie Awards, including Outstanding Achievement for Directing in an Animated Feature Production for Twomey. It wins the award for best animated feature for an independent film. This marks the first time a sole female director directs the film that wins the award. It also wins the Cinema for Peace award for Justice in 2018.

Twomey’s work also has a heavy presence at the Emile Awards, an annual event held by the European Animation Awards Association that honors European creators of animation. During the awards of 2018, which are hosted in Lile, France, her film The Breadwinner wins awards in five categories: Best Direction, Best Storyboarding, Best Character Animation, Best Background, and Best Character Design.

Twomey has won several awards according to the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland (SDGI). These awards include the best New Irish Short Animation at the Galway Film Fleadh (2002), Best Short at the Boston Irish Film Festival (2003), Best Animation at the Kerry Film Festival (2003), and the Silver Award at the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (2003) for her film From Darkness. Her film Cúilín Dualach (Backwards Boy) also wins the Best Animated Short from the Irish Film & Television Academy (2005), Best Short Film at Cartoons on the Bay (2005), Best Animation for Children at Animadrid (2005) and the Best Animation at the Celtic Film Festival (2005). Among other awards, the 2018 Cinema for Peace Award for Justice for her movie The Breadwinner can be included.

Cartoon Saloon, the studio Twomey co-founds with contemporaries Paul Young and Tom Moore in Kilkenny, has been nominated for five Academy Awards, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award and several Emmy Awards.


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Birth of Barry Andrews, Fianna Fáil Politician

Barry Andrews, Fianna Fáil politician who serves as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency, is born in Dublin on May 16, 1967. He previously serves as Minister of State for Children from 2008 to 2011. He is a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 2002 to 2011.

Andrews comes from a family with strong political connections. His grandfather, Todd Andrews, fought in the Irish War of Independence and became a founder-member of Fianna Fáil, and his grandmother, Mary Coyle, was a member of Cumann na mBan. His father, David Andrews, served as a TD from 1965 to 2002 and is a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, while his uncle, Niall Andrews, is a former Fianna Fáil TD and MEP and his cousin, Chris Andrews (son of Niall Andrews), has been a Sinn Féin TD since 2020 (having previously served as a Fianna Fáil TD from 2007 to 2011). In April 2018, Andrews is described as “part of Fianna Fáil royalty.”

Andrews is educated at Blackrock College and attends university at University College Dublin (UCD). Before entering political life, he works as a secondary school teacher in Dublin from 1991 until 1997, working in Senior College Ballyfermot, Sutton Park School and Bruce College. While a secondary school teacher, he studies law at King’s Inns and qualifies as a barrister in 1997. He is called to the Bar in 1997 and practices as a barrister until 2003.

Andrews is first elected to public office in the 1999 Irish local elections as a Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Councillor. He is elected to Dáil Éireann at the 2002 Irish general election.

In June 2006, Andrews leads a group of Fianna Fáil backbenchers in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a backbench committee to influence government policy. At the 2007 Irish general election, he retains his seat in Dún Laoghaire with 8,587 votes.

Andrews is appointed Minister of State for Children in May 2008. As Minister, he frames the Government response to the Ryan Report on Institutional Abuse. This includes an Implementation Plan that delivers an additional 200 social workers for the HSE Child and Family Services. In April 2009, he introduces the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Scheme, which provides, for the first time, free universal access to pre-school education. The scheme benefits 65,000 children in 2013.

After the release of the Murphy Report into child abuse in the Dublin diocese in November 2009, Andrews, speaking at a conference in Dublin Castle, is asked about the position of the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray. He says, “I think it’s everybody’s view that if adverse findings are made against an individual in a commission of inquiry, then it would be amazing that there be no consequences for them.” Bishop Murray subsequently apologises to survivors and resigns from office.

In December 2009, Andrews oversees the introduction of government policy to lower the legal age of consent to sixteen, citing a Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution report which recommends the legal age be reduced to sixteen from the current seventeen. He expresses the view the existing laws are “inappropriate” and out of touch with the modern reality of sexual relations between young people and promises to publish legislation to change the age of consent to sixteen. He notes that Ireland and Malta are “the only countries in Europe with an age of consent of seventeen.” However, the law is not passed by the Oireachtas before the 2011 Irish general election in which Fianna Fáil cedes power to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

On January 31, 2011, in the run up to the general election, Andrews is named Health spokesman by the party leader, Micheál Martin. He loses his seat at the general election.

In September 2012, Andrew is appointed Fianna Fáil Director of Elections for the Children’s referendum.

In February 2019, Andrews is selected as the Fianna Fáil candidate for the Dublin constituency at the 2019 European Parliament election. He is elected in May 2019 receiving 14.1% of the 1st preference votes, but as the fourth candidate elected, he does not take his seat until after the UK leaves the European Union on January 31, 2020.

In June 2023, Andrews is the recipient of the Defence, Security and Space Award at The Parliament Magazine‘s annual MEP Awards.

Andrews is a member of the European Parliament Committee on Development, the European Parliament Committee on International Trade, the European Parliament Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, the Delegation to the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, the Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with South Africa. His contributions to the International Trade committee include his work on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) where he is a rapporteur.

Andrews is a founder member of the European Parliament’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Alliance. He also founds the Brussels-Belfast Forum with members of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Andrews is appointed EU Chief Observer for the 2023 Nigerian Federal and State elections by High Representative Vice President Josep Borrell. A report on the election is subsequently produced highlighting that the election was marred by a lack of transparency, public mistrust in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), violence, and vote buying, stressing the need for comprehensive electoral reforms.

Outside of his political career, Andrews is appointed chief executive of the Irish aid charity GOAL in November 2012, replacing the retiring founder, John O’Shea. In October 2016, he resigns from GOAL after it is revealed that other senior executives of GOAL have been involved in “large-scale fraud,” though there is no suggestion that he himself is involved in the scandal. In October 2017, the new CEO of GOAL announces a deficit of €31.6 million due to the fraud but says that it will survive after “one of the most challenging years” in its 40-year history.

In March 2017, Andrews is appointed as Director-General of the Irish State-supported EU think tank and advocacy body, the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), with the Chairperson of the IIEA, former Leader of the Labour Party, Ruairi Quinn, describing him as having the “political and administrative skills” of value to the IIEA.

Andrews is married and has two sons and a daughter. His brother, David McSavage, is a comedian, and he is a first cousin of former RTÉ television and radio presenter Ryan Tubridy.