Breast Cancer Ireland has launched a new awareness programme, that is aimed at girls in Transition year.

The group hopes that new classroom-based information sessions will help boost breast cancer survival rates in later years.

A clinical nurse will provide girls with information about how to check for symptoms, and they are promoting a new app with information videos and reminders.

The organisation's CEO Aisling Hurley has said demand for the new education project came from young women who had survived the disease: “They sort of said to me really you should be telling much younger women how to be breast aware.

“Because that is the most important thing, and if they know today and if it becomes part of a monthly routine where they check themselves once a month then they will detect an abnormality if it arises.”