Westport’s Ashling Heneghan is the new Sydney Rose

WESTPORT native Ashling Heneghan has said she is still not over the shock of being crowned the Sydney Rose for 2024.

Ms Heneghan, who has lived in Sydney for just over a year, will wear the Sydney sash at the prestigious Rose of Tralee festival in August after being crowned the best of 12 competitors.

After working with the NHS for a number of years, Ms Heneghan moved to Australia where she works as a speech pathologist with adults and children with various disabilities.

Originally from Carabawn, she is the daughter of Frank and Stephanie Heneghan and is a past student of Scoil Phádraig girls school, Sacred Heart Secondary School in Westport. She also holds a degree from Trinity College Dublin.

Speaking to The Mayo News shortly after being crowned Syndey Rose, Ms Heneghan said he has still not gotten over the shock of winning the competition, which ran over two nights.

“I can barely sleep with the excitement. It felt just so surreal. All the videos my jaw is literally on the floor for the whole thing,” she told The Mayo News.

“I’m thinking: ‘Why have they picked me? There’s so many girls that are gorgeous inside and out’. I was honestly really really shocked.”

During her interview, the 28-year-old spoke about her research into the effects of screen time on children and her passion for accepting and including of people with disabilities.

For her party piece, she entertained the audience with sign language and spoke about her interest in sport and race walking.

Blessed to live among a large Irish community, Ms Heneghan was quickly surrounded by friends from Ireland and Australia and her boyfriend, Andrew Davison, after being crowned Sydney Rose.

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“It was actually really nice because I had a bit of a mix of friends. I had friends from home and Westport and some friends from university and some friends I made here over in Australia and my boyfriend is from where I lived in the UK [Newcastle] so I kind of felt like I had all the eras of Ashling sitting around the table,” she said.

Ms Heneghan described partaking in the competition as “a really good opportunity to represent Irish culture and heritage, and I’ve always kind of been passionate about bringing that with me no matter where I went in the world.”

“I was very nervous when I first did it,” she admitted.

“ There was two different nights when you had to go up on stage. So the first night I was actually last up every night.

“I was getting more and more nervous and overwhelmed by how accomplished all the girls were and all their accolades and achievements. Eventually I had to go up and I suppose be myself. It was so nice to just here everyone being so proud.”