Beauty looking for love on First Dates says her mother tried to set her up at a wake

Stunning radiographer Ciara Rath (26) confirms that she finds it hard to find a man.

The Armagh City girl’s mother Anne is so anxious for her daughter to get married she is showing relatives and friends of potential boyfriends her daughter’s pictures – even at a funeral.

“She has no boundaries that woman,” laugh Ciara. “She tries to set me up in work, everywhere she goes she’d be showing off my photos

“There was funeral for somebody from my dad’s school, they didn’t really know the person awfully well. There were a few people chatting at this wake and they had said their son was single and she said ‘so is my daughter’ and got out her phone and started showing off my photos, and came home and told me and I said ‘you did what?’.”

The Christmas before last Ciara, who plays GAA for Armagh Harps, moved home from her base in Belfast and went on Tinder.

She had struck up a bond with a Belfast lad called Pearse and spoke to him for several weeks, initially on Tinder and then on Instagram.

She was all excited on day when he asked her out and he said ‘you know what, put on something really nice, like a really nice outfit, I’m going to take you out for a nice date, it’s a surprise’.

Ciara spent two hours doing her hair and makeup and also put on a nice dress.

“So, he picked me up and he was wearing track suit bottoms and trainers,” she recollects.

“I got into the car and I said ‘what are we doing then’, he said ‘I don’t really know’. I said ‘I thought you were planning something?’

“So, we drove around aimlessly we ended up going to a McDonalds drive thru to get a McFlurry’s ice cream, which I can’t even eat. I got a coffee, so when he sped off the coffee spilled all over me.”

Ciara entered RTÉ’s First Dates to try and find the man of her dreams and is paired with Conor O’Callaghan (27) from Wexford, who admits his favourite accent is a northern one.

• First Dates RTÉ2 Thursday 9.30pm