Young Offenders star goes back to Irish college to perfect 'cúpla focal'

In one of the funniest scenes from the last season of Young Offenders, Hilary Rose’s on screen son, Conor McSweeney, had to undergo an excruciating Irish oral exam — now the actress who plays the role of Mairéad in the hit series is going back to Irish college and will face her own scrúdú béil as part of a new RTÉ series being screened during Seachtain na Gaeilge.

Hilary is one of five celebrities participating in Réaltaí na Gaeltachta .

She will be joined by TV presenter Brendan Courtney, comedian and actor Owen Colgan, soul singer Toshín, and rugby player and Olympian Erin King as they journey to the Waterford Gaeltacht to learn Irish in Coláiste na Rinne while staying with a bean a’tí.

Under the tutelage of Pádraigín Ní Chadhla and helped by a range of local characters, the five students will immerse themselves in the summer college experience – complete with classes, craic and the ceolchoirm — in the RTÉ 1 series which gets underway this evening at 7pm and continues for four weeks.

Each day the students follow a timetable – ranganna in the morning with múinteoir Pádraigín and her assistant, Conor, and action-packed afternoons filled with all sorts of activities — sport, singing, swimming, dancing and even cycling the Greenway.

At the end of the week, each student will build up to a ‘scrúdú béil’ to see just how much their knowledge of Gaeilge has improved. And with a prize-giving at the ceolchoirm at the end of the week —who will come out as true Réaltaí na Gaeltachta?

Set against the beautiful coastal backdrop of An Rinn, in Waterford, it’s not long before the students find themselves living out their teenage dreams — making friendships to last a lifetime and forging new personal connections to the language they never imagined possible — the things that made the Coláiste Gaeilge experience so special for previous generations

For everyone who has ever been to a Coláiste Samhraidh — and for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like — Réaltaí na Gaeltachta is described as “the feel-good dose of nostalgia and novelty that celebrates getting to know and love our glorious language, all over again” and is the highlight of RTÉ’s offering for this year’s Seachtain na Gaeilge which continues on until St Patrick’s Day.