There's something about Joanne O'Riordan. She may have been born with the very rare condition known as Total Amelia meaning she was born without limbs - but that's not it. She is quite simply determination personified. 

When I met Joanne last week to discuss the documentary - made by her brother Steven O'Riordan - that follows her from when she sets the UN (yes, the actual United Nations) the challenge to make a robot for her and her resulting journey - I met a teenager from a normal Irish family who likes to change the colour of her hair, boys and sport.

However, you couldn't really call Joanne a typical teenager. Not the young woman who personally stood up to Enda Kenny, has tirelessly campaigned for disability rights, has written numerous articles for The Irish Examiner, has challenged the UN at a congress in New York to make her a robot (that achievement had to be mentioned twice) has had a song written for her by a Grammy award winner (Julie Gold) and has a documentary based on her life being released nationwide.

At the same time, speaking with Joanne is just like having gab with an old, funny friend, the type you could spend hours with discussing anything and everything from Spanish football to engineering to the Kardashians.

The main reason why we are sitting together in the Merrion Hotel is because of No Limbs, No Limits the moving and inspiring documentary that hits Irish screens on Friday. The title comes from her personal motto - one that she stringently sticks to.

Joanne is immensely proud of the doc and fervently defends it from critics who point out that it is not quite a 'Hollywood blockbuster'.

'[Critics] have to point out both pros and cons and I suppose the main ‘con’ so far is that the filming is kind of...rough and not like a Hollywood blockbuster kind of vibe. But that was the aim.'

'It’s home archiving and to be fair we only had, like, €50,000 to work with so, you know, if we had had €150,000 we probably would have had the Hollywood blockbuster but I mean, there’s no point in making a Hollywood blockbuster without getting out my personality.'

'Obviously we knew it was rough and rugged but we thought the story would come out more.'

I agree. I've seen the doc and not only did I warm to Joanne’s sparkling personality immediately, I loved the depictions of regular Irish family life. Her parents talk candidly on film about how they had no idea how to deal with a child with a disability, how the doctors were cold to their plight but how the doctors' attitudes 'put the drive in them' to give Joanne as good and normal a life as possible.

Joanne told me, 'We’re a typical Irish family. I mean, if you do well you get abuse, so you know you’ve done well when you get the abuse!
At the end of the day...we have a joke 24/7 and we kill each other 24/7 - so it’s just a typical Irish family, you know. There’s five children altogether and then obviously my parents. I’m the baby of the family so everyone’s like, 'Oh, Joanne’s spoilt', but in my opinion I work hard for my things! But no, it definitely comes across in the documentary about the family lifestyle, so that was pretty cool.'

Despite her many achievements, Joanne is still not even eighteen years old (although she turns that age at the end of the month) and she is hoping to study journalism once the Leaving Cert. is out of the way. 

'Yeah, I want to be a journalist. If I go down the, you know, 'proper' journalism [route], like, not branching off into TV or radio, I’d love to be a sports journalist. I’d love to go out and interview players. I just have a high fascination with sport stars! I love sport anyway so, to me it’s kind of natural. Or else, [I would be] an entertainment journalist like on Xposé or E!News or things like that - being on the red carpet going, ‘What are you wearing tonight?’ that kind of jazz.'

'I’d love to have my own TV show, that would be the dream because then I’d have my own mix of it. I’d have sports, entertainment, maybe politics, maybe regular people with regular stories coming on and all of that kind of stuff. Like Ellen!'

And why ever not? The general consensus of those who meet her, read her articles, hear her on the radio or see her on TV is that she's a breath of fresh air, a great character and someone who can definitely entertain.

It's clear she thinks big - our discussion on her potential studies in UL lead to her thoughts on Donald Trump 'buying County Clare' and how it would be cool to have his money: 'Then we would have a Hollywood blockbuster!'

Her good humour shines through constantly, like when I brought up Robbie the Robot.

'Robbie? Oh Robbie the Robot! I thought you were talking about a random guy in my life, I’m like, who’s Robbie? Bring him to me!'

Of course Robbie is the robot developed by engineers at Trinity College that could and should be the key to Joanne living an independent life in the future.

She explained, 'The robot [will be] basically my way of accessing the outside world without a human with me 24/7.'

'We call the robot the slave without emotions. You know when you can bounce around your niece or nephew and they do whatever you want them to do but then when you get older and they’re throwing tantrums and are like ‘No, I’m not doing it’? The robot is basically a substitute for that!'

'I mean, if I couldn’t get 24 hour care, if I could only get say 12 hours then the robot would substitute in for the last 12 hours and hopefully as the robotics engineers move on further it would end up doing the 24 hours with me. It could go down the streets with me and I could take it with me so it’s kind of like a friend without emotions, yeah.'

There is no denying that Joanne has faced difficulty in her life and encountered obstacles along the way. Luckily, her spirit, good humour, determination and technology has enabled her to live a full and rounded life. It’s easy to forget that she is still so young but she has her whole life in front of her, and the future looks bright.

In her own words, ‘'Yeah! I’m excited for the future obviously and I can’t wait to maybe get into college and hopefully be a journalist and do my own thing in life so it should be pretty cool.’'

No Limbs, No Limits opens nationwide on Friday, April 11t.