First dates in Ireland: single mother steps out of her comfort zone after two decades of “situations”

A First Dates contestant and single mom joked about how her daughter persuaded her to come on the hit show to get rid of her hair.

Dublin’s Niamh Hogan said after more than two decades of “the situation” it was time to step out of her comfort zone and find Mr. Right.

Niamh, 40, told the Irish Mirror: “My daughter Jess was everything to me doing First Dates.

She joked, “She’s trying to get me out of her hair, I think she misses me now, she’s like please go have fun with someone else.”

The online communications manager said she was fed up with dating that never led to much.

She said, “I call them situational situations, where you don’t officially go out, and then you hit six or eight months old and you’re like, ‘ah, I’m going to leave it’.

“So there hasn’t been an official boyfriend at all for decades, but there were a lot of frogs and tadpoles.

“I thought to myself why not, get out of my comfort zone and see what happens.”

On tonight’s show, Niamh is dating 37-year-old Dennis and they spend their evening in the “Love Shack”.

She said: “The date was very comfortable and we were two meters away so it was like ‘what to be nervous about? “, it was not too intimate.

There were fireworks, she adds: “The minute we met, we got along like a house on fire.

“We literally threw ourselves on the table talking absolute gibberish, our personalities were pretty similar.”

“For a while I didn’t even notice the cameras were there, I was outside in the Love Shack.

“There was a terrible wind there, there was no way we were restless, it was as if we were at the children’s table!”

Joking as to whether she was hoping to find her Prince on TV, she laughed: “Well not necessarily, I’d rather meet him at Lidl to see what he was buying!”

Internet dating has never been her thing, she explains: “On a Saturday night, the girls always said to meet someone on Tinder.

“I was bored and had a hangover on a Sunday, I went online and after about an hour I closed the app.

“You’re not going to find the caliber of person you want on the internet, I get bored so quickly, I never even made a call.”

At 40, Niamh has some pep in her approach, she explains: “The older you get, I think, the less you care what people think of you.

“When I was 25 I didn’t go to the store without an outfit, now I walk around with my hair in a bun and I don’t care.

“Next to my bed I have a picture in a frame that says I’m a happy person, so you subliminally believe you’re happy.

She smiles, “So I’m a happy person to go on first dates.”

First Dates Ireland will be broadcast on RTE 2 this Thursday evening at 9:30 p.m.