A LIMERICK woman’s hopeful quest to find love will play out on screens nationwide this week on one of the country’s favourite TV shows.
61-year-old Limerick yoga instructor and donkey sanctuary worker Sinead O’Beirne Brinn will feature on First Dates Ireland this Thursday (January 11).
The Fr Russell Road woman was paired off with with retired Garda Michael (63) from Wexford. But did sparks fly or was Cupid’s arrow short of the mark?
Sinead was playing her cards close to her chest when she caught up with the Limerick Post. Sworn to secrecy, she would not say whether she still has a need for an online dating profile.
“You’ll have to tune in,” she insists when pushed for the exclusive on her romantic rendezvous under the camera’s gaze.
Chairperson of Women’s Shed Limerick, Sinead made a big impression on The Ray D’Arcy Show when the Shed officially launched live on air last June.
Sinead was a little more forthcoming when asked what she told First Dates she was looking for in a partner.
“I didn’t say looks because I am not that type of person. Though I am 5’ 9” and I did say I wanted someone taller than me,” Sinead confesses.
“I’m tall for a girl but people often lie about their height and they will have people coming in who are shorter. For me, that’s a no go. They have to be taller than me.
“After that, I said I was looking for someone who would make me smile and make me laugh, and more importantly someone who doesn’t want to change me, because I am quite unique.
“I am talkative. What I don’t want is someone who will put baby in the corner and expect me to be quiet – because it might not happen,” she confessed.
Sinead, who is well known in Limerick from her years in retail management in numerous city stores and businesses, is hugely family orientated. She described her daughter Casey (31) as her “whole world” and said she would respect someone who felt the same about their own family.
In fact, daughter Casey was very keen for her lovelorn mother to put herself out there on national television to find Mister Right.
“Myself and Casey watch First Dates all the time,” Sinead says. “She is always telling me, ‘you should go on that’. She says to me ‘you’d be brilliant at it’ and I said ‘no way, I wouldn’t do it’.”
Sinead says she was also encouraged by fellow Women’s Shed Limerick member Eimear Scully, who conspired with the Shed chairwoman to apply for the show together.
The vivacious mother says that Cupid intervened and the decision to participate was taken out of her hands once she began filling out the application form with her daughter.
“I would fill in a tiny bit of it, but then I would stop. Over about three weeks I was filling in my answer to one question at a time and then coming away from it again.
“We still hadn’t finished it and First Dates rang me. I hadn’t even submitted my form and they said ‘we want you on the programme’. The production company behind the show could see even the little bits I was filling in on the form. They had been watching me for weeks filling in a little bit here and there but they knew of me from The Ray D’Arcy Show and that’s how it came about.”
Love-hungry Sinead stayed tight-lipped about the date itself but deemed the whole experience as “the best day of my life”.
“I can’t tell you about the outcome of the date, but I will say from beginning to end, from the first phone call from the producer right up to now, they have treated me like royalty. I would recommend going on the show to anyone. It was the best day of my life. I absolutely loved the experience. I really loved it.”
To find out whether or not Sinead found true love with her retired Wexford Garda, tune in to First Dates this Thursday (January 11) at 9.35pm on RTÉ 2.
