Cork man on First Dates experience: ‘We said yes to another date... but haven’t got round to it yet'

To be fair to Diarmuid Lehane, you have to say he is a man for the long game.

The 21-year-old Cork singleton starred on the first episode of a new series of First Dates Ireland on Thursday night.

He got on like a house on fire with his date, Shannon, 21, from Limerick - and both agreed afterwards that they would meet up again. Romance was in the air!

But, despite the fact the pair live just 20 minutes’ drive away from each other, they still haven’t had a second date almost six months after the RTÉ show was recorded.

I’m even more surprised when Diarmuid, from Meelin in North Cork, tells me that he bumped into Shannon a few weeks after their TV encounter, in Tralee last summer.

“We had a few pints,” says the genial Diarmuid.

But still no date?

I’m confused.

“It’s probably more of a friendship than a romance,” the Cork man admits, without completely ruling out the prospect of a future date.

It’s fair to point out the lovely Shannon also appears to be playing the long game, despite the TV date being such a success.

Chatting to Diarmuid after his stint on the TV show, I can clearly see the yawning gap between my own younger dating days and the way the young people of today do it - or at least the way a young self-confessed ‘culchie’ like Diarmuid does it.

He tells me he had one serious girlfriend before appearing on First Dates Ireland. Why did he go on the show?

“It was after a few pints - maybe one too many!” explains Diarmuid. “I was with four or five friends and an ad popped up on Facebook for the show. I thought, sure, I might as well. I was curious.”

It tells you everything you need to know about this bubbly, likeable man that he was the only one of those friends brave enough to apply!

What was the experience like?

“It was grand, to be fair,” says Diarmuid, a car salesman by trade who is also a musician who sings and plays keyboard and fiddle.

“I hadn’t a clue who Shannon was when we met in the restaurant, but it soon turned out we had a lot of mutual friends.”

He said on the show that Shannon - - who admitted a preference for ‘culchies’ - was “very nice, very good-looking, and he was very nervous”.

Proving that Ireland really is a village at heart, student teacher Shannon had actually taught Diarmuid’s brothers the previous year.

I often wonder does this sense of Ireland being one big village - especially in rural areas - make it harder for young people to engage with the dating scene.

It’s one thing to be rejected for a date, quite another to know your mum will be regaled with all the juicy gossip around it next time she is in the post office!

Either way, Diarmuid seems to be happy to still be single, and has plenty of girls among his friendship circle.

I ask him what he is looking for in a romantic partner.

“Someone who will have the craic,” he replies.

But that would be the case for his platonic girl friends too?

Diarmuid shrugs. “I’m single and proud - and happy,” he says.

I tell him I gather that nearly every young person in Ireland now uses dating apps. Does he?

“I’m on them, but don’t ever use them,” he says, while acknowledging that girls may be keener to use them than boys.

So, if someone swiped right on him to make a match?

“Sure, I wouldn’t find out for six months,” smiles Diarmuid, whose older sister, primary school teacher Nancy, represented Cork at the 2025 Rose of Tralee.

Does he ever see himself getting married and having children in the future?

“That’s too much to think about,” he says, “there’s no panic.”

Talking to Diarmuid has offered me a fascinating insight into modern-day dating - at least among laidback, rural fellas like him. He is living his best life.

I tell him that, in my day (yawn, grandad!), us fellas had to actually pluck up the courage to ask girls out to their face - since calling them on the one, very public family telephone might mean an excruciating encounter with her gatekeeper mother or - even worse! - father.

Has Diarmuid ever asked a girl out like that?

“No!” he replies, thankful for a world in which texting and apps now do the heavy lifting.

“Sure, times move on,” he adds, “I’m glad I wasn’t around in your day.”

And I’m not so sure I would like to be on the dating scene today, to be honest.

The old ways of jagging, shifting, and desperately hoping to avoid ‘a’fifty’ have been overtaken by a world where people communicate with their devices and talk of being ghosted (dumped) and friend-zoned (essentially, dumped).

More power to Diarmuid, then, for bravely volunteering to go on a date where every word is being recorded.

I wonder if he and Shannon will ever make that second date...