Six children from Pettigo travelled to Galway on Sunday to compete in an audition for a new RTE television programme aiming to seek out the best of Ireland's underage talent.

The contestants, Chloe Britton, Clara Murphy, Saoirse McGrath, Thomas Beaumont, Jamie Johnston and Cian McAlone are all students of the Siobhan O'Brien School of Drama.

Only 150 of the thousands of entries made it through to the auditions, and this will be whittled down to 36 for the grand finale. Those winners will attend the RTE studios to meet another panel for a televised show to be presented in the Autumn.

Prior to the auditions, each candidate had to send a video of each participant giving a brief three minute performance of a piece of drama of their choosing. These videos were then adjudicated by an RTE panel of experts and the children were invited to attend the weekend finals, the results of which will be made known over the coming days.

This was the first time that I put any of the students forward for programmes of this nature but I felt that after the success of last year's documentary which featured both the children and the other members of Borderline Players, in a 'A tale of two Panto's', that the time was right to introduce some of the younger members to the media world," Siobhan explained.

"With so many talent shows on at the moment such as 'The X Factor' and 'Britain's Got Talent' it is great that there is now a competition here that gives children the spotlight, and even if the children are not chosen to go forward to the next round of the competition the experience has been most worthwhile and both the parents and families of the children involved have acknowledged this."