{"id":644211,"date":"2026-08-18T20:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T20:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/644211\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T20:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T20:28:13","slug":"daithi-o-se-people-were-having-cheap-shots-at-the-rose-of-tralee-for-a-long-long-time-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/644211\/","title":{"rendered":"D\u00e1ith\u00ed \u00d3 S\u00e9: \u2018People were having cheap shots at the Rose of Tralee for a long, long time\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking in advance of Tuesday night\u2019s broadcast of the Rose of Tralee<\/a> final, presenter D\u00e1ith\u00ed \u00d3 S\u00e9<\/a> countered criticism that the festival is dated. <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople were having cheap shots at the Rose of Tralee for a long, long time as opposed to looking at the Rose of Tralee for what it really is and what it has been for a long time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The broadcaster said the Rose of Tralee festival gives a good insight into what Irish people are doing in a particular year, and that is changing; therefore, the Rose of Tralee is changing. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take a Rose from the 1970s, there\u2019s a good chance she would go on stage and talk about being a teacher, or a nurse and probably not have travelled a whole lot. It will show what women were doing in certain years. This year you have doctors, you have engineers, you have people who have travelled all around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that some naysayers were \u201csceptical\u201d about the friendships the participants forge during the tour leading up to the live broadcast and selection. <\/p>\n

\u201cI would follow a lot of them on Instagram and you\u2019d see that they are still friends 10 years later, and going to each other\u2019s weddings,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u00d3 S\u00e9 added that the \u201ccriticism has kind of gone away\u201d in recent years. Co-presenter Kathryn Thomas agreed. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Rose of Tralee preparations: \u2018I coincided embracing my hair loss with my decision not to wear fake tan\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time it was almost part of the festival to slag it. And then the festival happens and everyone is like, \u2018oh, how can you slag it?\u2019 but I think it is less and less now. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t argue with the women and the stories and the confidence and the eloquence and the achievements, and as I said, the sisterhood. It\u2019s very rare you get 32 women standing shoulder to shoulder.\u201d <\/p>\n

She praised the broadcast for being \u201cthree hours of positivity, confidence, vulnerability, reality, support, family diaspora. Maybe it\u2019s a problem with the world that we live in, that three hours of goodness … is kind of hard to come by these days.\u201d <\/p>\n

The presenters were both unable to hint at who would be crowned tonight\u2019s Rose of Tralee, or shed light on how the adjudication process worked. As Thomas said, there is no official criteria for selecting the winning Rose. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea how the judging worked. I thought it was all done and dusted before the telly, but no, it all continues on, so there are four judges, and they don\u2019t have set criteria. They are just trying to find one woman who can represent all of the Roses and can carry all of the stories of the Roses. They don\u2019t have a checklist.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Rose of Tralee airs on RT\u00c9 One and RT\u00c9 Player on Tuesday from 8pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking in advance of Tuesday night\u2019s broadcast of the Rose of Tralee final, presenter D\u00e1ith\u00ed \u00d3 S\u00e9 countered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,888],"class_list":["post-644211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rose-of-tralee"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117118403400614067","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}