This article is from page 11 of the 2011-09-06 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 11 JPG
IRELAND’S last living matchmaker, Willie Daly, says he is the man to find a fourth husband for lovelorn singer Sinead O’Connor.
O’Connor, who says she is looking for an older man, with “leather trouser-wearing gardaí” and farmers a special fancy, last month admitted that she would have joined an online dating service long ago but feared that the media would find out and scupper her chances of love.
With the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival just getting underway, Willie Daly believes that he would have no problem finding a match for O’Connor.
“Over the years, quite a lot of celebrities have come and attended the festival. They would be surprised themselves about how much they would be attracted by a lot of the people attending the festival. The men and women who come to the festival do get on very well together and maybe people can be reluctant to go up to someone who might be that bit famous,” said Willie.
“Sometimes people are put off by the bit of celebrity but Sinead O’Connor seems like a lovely person. She sounds like a very down-to-earth person and that is what the people who come to the festival are looking for. Lisdoonvarna is a real holdinghands kind of place. Maybe later on in the night they might have other thoughts but early in the evening it is a very romantic little town.”
This year’s festival got underway over the weekend and will continue for the next five weeks. According to Willie Daly, the people contacting the matchmaking service this years are more serious and more interested in marriage.
“The festival builds up bit by bit each week and we did get a lot of people already this weekend. We got a lot of serious people, people looking for marriage. In the past, anyone who would come early might have been looking for fun but it really seems like marriage is back in a bit way, much more than in the last four or five years anyway,” said Willie.
“I think that the need for security has crept back in. If people are on the dole or they have low incomes, I think that maybe they feel that two incomes are better than one. We did a lot of introductions last weekend we introduced a lot of people on Saturday and Sunday night.
“We’ve had a lot of women down this weekend. Maybe there will be more men as the week goes on. We are looking for a nice balance but at the moment we have a lot of women interested.”