On Monday evening, Shortt attended a homecoming at Galway Corinthians rugby club, where he'd spent much of his sporting youth before deciding, as an U-16, that the time was right to focus on swimming. "I didn't expect so many people to show up," he says of the welcome back. "I think half the town was there. It was great seeing everybody and I was just very proud."
Now that the Leaving Cert results are out, attention turns to college and career, but what road should you take when the map is being redrawn by AI? The Leaving Cert results are out and college offers are around the corner. Yet for Ireland's class of 2025, a larger question overshadows the scramble for places: will three or four years of lectures and tens of thousands of euro really equip students for a labour market in which artificial intelligence is advancing at breakneck speed?
"I was a musician and I suppose, really, I always wanted to get into performance. But I didn't realise it - and that's a big problem too..."