I am a senator, former sports broadcaster and now a children’s author. I grew up in Kilkenny and my only regret about Kilkenny is that I don’t live there any more.
Even when I was growing up in the 1980s and 90s, Kilkenny was big enough to do whatever you wanted to do, whether you were into sport or drama or music or chess or film-making- it had everything. It was also small enough that it didn’t feel overwhelming like a city. When I moved to Dublin to come to college, it still felt like a big deal, but Kilkenny never felt like it had that small town mindset to me. Kilkenny has an awful lot going for it; people sometimes only think it’s hurling, hurling and hurling, but it’s so much more than that.
I’m adopted, but my parents never treated me any differently. I have a brother, Cormac, who has passed away now, but he was also adopted, and I have a sister Áine who’s six years younger than me. She was conceived out of the blue after my parents assumed they weren’t able to have kids.
Unfortunately, a lot of families go through a loved one’s experience with mental health difficulties and addiction issues, and sadly, Cormac’s ended in suicide. It’s a different kind of grief, and people often don’t know what to say, and that’s okay. There’s a candle lighting pretty much every day since he died in my front hall at home. There is a picture and a little tea light, and it’s lit every day.
Mum and Dad have a little lantern on his grave, and there’s a candle in there. The wind will blow it out every so often, but Dad is at the grave most days, and he likes to keep that lit.
When Cormac died, my eldest child Séimí was 18 months. So, he doesn’t really have a memory of him, but it’s nice that there are pictures of Cormac around.
I have three kids, Séimí, Peigí and Teidí and I’m trying to instil a love of Irish in them, without forcing it on them They have Irish names and my youngest has just started in the naíonara, so it’s the beginning of his Irish language journey. I haven’t been as regimented with him in terms of speaking Irish when he was small as I was with Séimí. Séimí is now in a Gaeilcholáiste in secondary school, but my daughter moved from a Gaeilscoil to into an English-speaking primary school last year.
I did a master’s in the Irish language in NUIG and ended up working for a production company in Dublin who were producing a show for TG4.
Women’s sport is still having a moment, but I do think there needs to be a conscious decision for people to engage with it, because otherwise it will fall off the radar
— Evanne Ní Chuilinn
When I first started sports broadcasting in 2004, it was so different. We have a way to go yet with pundits and commentators, but certainly with anchors and reporters and broadcasters in general, I think it is now 50-50 men-women in Ireland. That is really encouraging. It means younger women and girls who have an interest in sports see a viable pathway career-wise.
Evanne Ní Chuilinn. Photograph Nick Bradshaw
I was 21 years in the industry, and in the second 10 years, I really noticed a huge uptick in female journalism students contacting me for advice around working in the industry and “how do I do this?” and “how do I do that?” And they had absolute confidence that they were entitled to carve out their own career in sports broadcast journalism. When I started, I didn’t necessarily have sports anchor role models in Ireland. It felt like we were the first wave. I’m so thankful and grateful that social media didn’t exist when I was in my early career because I don’t know if I would have had the fortitude or the mental strength to deal with the criticism. It was very daunting going into that environment, and you were often the only woman in the press room or the press box.
There has been a real push in terms of Irish women in sport. Pick a sport, and there’s an Irish woman on the podium. You have got Ellen Walsh, a recent European champion, Rhasidat Adeleke Emma Slevin in gymnastics, Katie McCabe, Katie Taylor, Kellie Harrington. The list is endless.
The Irish paralympic athletes also until very recently didn’t have role models to look up to. Now younger girls with a vision impairment or a limb difference have the likes of Orla Comerford and Ellen Keane, who are world-class Paralympic medallists.
When I was writing my book Squad Girls, that was a huge part of the narrative – that young girls who are absolutely immersed in sport could not only have role models who are older than them, but could see themselves in popular culture and see themselves celebrated in fiction in the same way we’ve been celebrating boys.
My daughter is a reluctant reader. I would bring her to the library and to bookshops, and she just wasn’t really inspired by what she was seeing. I would ask her, “What do you want to read, then?” She was like, “I want to read about gymnastics,” because she’s a gymnast. I said, “Right, fine. Well, if I write a book about gymnastics, will you read it?” And that became a bit of a joke. In the end, I was like, “Right, I’ll just write a book.”
Evanne Ní Chuilinn. Photograph Nick Bradshaw
[ Women’s sport received 18% of media coverage in 2025Opens in new window ]
Women’s sport is still having a moment, but I do think there needs to be a conscious decision for people to engage with it, because otherwise it will fall off the radar. It’s really that finely balanced. I am hoping the book will be a bit of a push to keep that momentum going, and just make sure everybody remembers some of the best sports stars we have are women.
In conversation with Niamh Browne.
Squad Girls By Evanne Ní Chuilinn is published by Gill.