IT WAS TEN years ago that First Dates Ireland aired its first episode, and its pairings have had some success – but not as many marriages as one may think.

An Irish version of the UK’s hugely popular First Dates series on Channel 4, the show focuses on singles matched up for a blind date at Dublin’s Gibson Hotel. Its first episode aired on RTÉ2 on 21 April 2016.

Over dinner and drinks (with the occasional cutaway to phone calls made in the privacy of the bathroom), the pair get to know one another and, at the end, decide whether they would like to see each other again.

The Journal spoke to one of the show’s matchmakers and a dater who met her husband-to-be on the show to learn the behind-the-scenes and what makes a match.

Each episode features a new cast of daters, but the show is guided by the presence of the staff: currently maître d’ Mateo Saina, barman Neil Kenna, and waiters Alice and Pete. 

Over the 11 seasons of the Irish series, there have been 543 dates. Of these dates, 367 couples agreed to a second date. From that 367, there have been – so far – four marriages, two current engagements, and one baby, with another baby on the way, according to the production company behind the show.

The process

Potential “daters” are required to fill out an application to be in with the chance of making it onto the show. The application takes about ten minutes and has 20 questions. The first 14 pertain to basic information about yourself: your name, age, height, job, whether you have children, and so on and so forth.

The next four fall under “more about you”: Tell us about yourself; Tell us about your hobbies; Tell us about your best/worst dating experience; What do you look for in a partner.

From there, you upload a photo of yourself and tell the production team when it would not suit for them to give you a call.

So, what do people ask for regarding their prospective date?

“I told them I wanted a tall ginger,” former dater Ginine Power tells The Journal. “The producer that set us up always said: ‘she was looking for a tall ginger man and he was looking for someone independent’. He had all the nice attributes!”

Power, an IT worker and aerial silks instructor from Maynooth, and Mayo garda Andrew Martin met on the show in 2021, where they bonded over Guinness and a Covid-era two-metre table. In August 2025, Martin proposed, and the couple are to marry in the spring.

Ginine Power and her fiancé Andrew Martin pictured after their engagement. Ginine Power Ginine Power

Power and Martin are one of the six couples from the 543 dating pairs whose televised date is to result in nuptials.

During the Covid lockdown, Power and her housemates would have a night in on Fridays and watch a few shows, with First Dates being one of them. She decided she would apply, more for the experience than with any expectations to meet her life partner.

“I know it’s going to sound a bit ridiculous, but I didn’t actually expect to meet someone on it. I thought it would be an experience more than anything, and maybe go on a few dates afterwards.

“I definitely never imagined I would be marrying and spending the rest of my life with the person from the date.”

At the time of their first date, Power was living in Dublin and Martin was in Donegal. “It was a lot of phone calls and just meeting up when we could,” Power said. 

The pair now live in Sligo.

“We kinda forget a lot that [First Dates] is how we met,” she said. “People always have a really positive reaction to it [learning how the couple met]. They just think it’s such a unique way to meet somebody.”

Would she recommend the experience? As one of the success stories, she would.

“It’s not one of these shows where they want drama. The show works better when the people get along and do like each other – that’s what people want to see. So they really do put in a lot of effort to pair people up and match them as best they can, so it makes it a really nice experience.”

First Dates producer and matchmaker Cliona Beattie told The Journal just how much effort the team puts into pairing up prospective couples.

The first application is a starting off point, but the producers spend time chatting to prospective daters about their dealbreakers, what they’re looking for, what they’re willing to compromise on, their dating history, and getting a feel for their personalities.

If the matchmakers feel they have found someone who could be a potential match, they’ll bring the daters in separately to do a lengthy interview on camera about what they’re hoping for in their dating partner.

These interviews end up spliced into the show (normally something akin to a dater saying, “I want someone who can make me laugh” in their pre-date interview, and then cutting to giggles at the table).

“There are four or five matchmakers. Sometimes we have to discuss amongst ourselves if these are the right match, someone else [a matchmaker] might have someone that they think could be a match – sometimes we nearly end up fighting over people because we’re so invested in what we think is the right one for them [daters].”

Each matchmaker will typically be responsible for 12 to 14 First Dates pairings on each series of the show.

The daters’ preferences take ultimate priority, but the team put a lot of work into getting to know each individual to find the best pairing out of the pool of applicants.

“It’s a rare occurrence, but sometimes people ask for certain things and sometimes it’s not realistic, or you have an idea of what might actually be good for them even if they’re not sure of that themselves, by building that relationship and having that trust,” Beattie said.

“There’s the odd time that I might have a conversation with one of my daters and say, ‘look, I can’t tick every single box, but I think I’ve got someone that’s going to be a lot of fun to have a date with, and I think if you’re open to it, it’s worth a shot.”

Beattie said she gets “so excited” for the daters to meet and have their date.

One of the recent pairings on the show Beattie recalled watching with her “heart in [her] mouth” was Sorcha and Jenny, whose date was in episode two of this eleventh series, which aired earlier this month.

Jennifer and Sorcha's first date aired on the show on 5 February. RTÉ RTÉ

“When I first met Sorcha, she very clearly said to me, ‘you know, I’m in a wheelchair and I’m a lesbian, so it’s a very small dating pool’,” she said.

“When I found the match for her, oh my God, I’ve never been so excited.” The date went well and Beattie was there for the two’s post-date interview, where they said they’d like to see each other again.

“I cried,” she said. “It was the first time that I cried, because I was just so thrilled that they hit it off so well.”

The couple are still seeing each other, and Beattie says she and the rest of the team take their roles very seriously having seen how much their work can impact people’s lives.

Finding people a real match that the matchmakers think could work out takes precedence over pairing people for the sake of exciting TV, and viewers enjoy watching people hit it off, she said.

There are other considerations to take into account, one being the burning question: how important are looks?

“It’s a tricky one,” Beattie says. “It very much depends on what the person says to us, that’s why the no-holds-barred phone calls are important. There are some people that looks are vitally important to them – and that’s fine, I’m not here to judge that. 

“But similarly there are people who are totally open to anything… we have to take the lead from the daters themselves.”

They also go to efforts to ensure daters won’t be paired up with someone they already know, while trying to balance people geographically. 

“We do, in as much as possible, try to avoid people that know each other. Look, we can’t. Ireland is a small country. We can’t account for every eventuality,” Beattie said, adding that it was particularly difficult to ensure this for people from the smaller gay community.

At the same time, they try to make sure daters won’t be paired up with someone who lives an unmanageable distance away.

While the marriage figures may not make the show’s matchmaking look particularly successful, Beattie said that outside of the countless relationships that have sprung from the show – many of whom would be younger people not rushing into marriage – friendships and connections have emerged from dates as well.  

Two daters on the show last year, both aged in their 80s, didn’t hit it off romantically but ended up releasing a book together.

“They became best friends. So there’s connections made throughout every series.”

First Dates Ireland continues on Thursday 19 February at 9.35pm on RTÉ2.