Bealtaine Festival is delighted to feature one of Ireland’s best-loved broadcasters Miriam O’Callaghan talking about her exceptionally honest memoir Miriam: Life, Work, Everything. In a reversal of her usual role, Miriam joins award winning journalist and writer Susan McKay for an intimate chat about her phenomenal career as a broadcaster and shares her remarkable philosophy on how she balances a high-octane career, a family life as a mother of eight, and being a vibrant public persona.
Biographies
Miriam O’Callaghan is one of Ireland’s most well-known and respected presenters in television and radio. A winner of many awards for her work including IFTAs, Celtic Media Tores and Justice Media Awards,
Miriam works today primarily as a Broadcast Journalist with RTE.
Born and raised in Dublin, Miriam went to University College Dublin aged just 16 to study Law and qualified as a solicitor. She also holds a post graduate Diploma in European Law from UCO. After being interviewed by the BBC as a young lawyer in Dublin, Miriam got the urge to change career and to go into broadcasting. Her first job was in UK television working as a researcher on ITV’s This is your Life. In 1987, she joined the BBC as a BBC producer working on shows such as Kilroy and Family Matters. In 1989 she was headhunted by BBC Newsnight and became a reporter on that programme for almost 10 years.
In 1996, Miriam began to present RTE’s current affairs flagship programme Prime Time, while continuing to cover the Northern Irish peace process for Newsnight. In August 2000, Miriam co-founded Mint Productions, an independent production company that specialised in documentary with her husband Steve Carson. Mint won many awards for its documentaries including for landmark series such as Haughey, Bertie and Our Lady’s.
Miriam anchored RTE’s coverage of the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland and also former US President Biden’s visit to Mayo. Miriam is also particularly proud of one moment in her career when she helped to win the accolade ‘Ireland’s Greatest’ for the incredible peacemaker John Hume by making a documentary for RTE on John and championing him in a public vote.
Miriam also presents her own radio show on RTE Radio 1, Sunday with Miriam, which is one of the Top Ten of Ireland’s most listened to radio shows. Sunday with Miriam has also won a PPI award for best Speech Driven Magazine Show. For fourteen years, Miriam also presented the RTE One television summer chat show Saturday Night with Miriam.
Miriam is a patron of many charities including Ireland’s only children’s Hospice for children Laura Lynn, Family Carers Ireland, Cliona’s Foundation and The NMH Foundation. Miriam also supports many other charitable causes throughout the year.
In 2025 she published her Memoir ‘Miriam – Life, Work. Everything’ which became a Number One bestselling book in Ireland.
Susan McKay became Ireland’s Press Ombudsman on 3 October 2022, the first woman to be appointed to the role.
Her books include “Northern Protestants – On Shifting Ground” (2021), “Bear In Mind These Dead” (2007) and “Sophia’s Story” (1998). Her essays have appeared in many anthologies, and her journalism has been published in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, Field Day Review, the Irish Times and the Guardian. She was Northern Editor of the Sunday Tribune until 2004.
She has been a senior figure in the NGO sector – from 2009 to 2012 she was CEO of the National Women’s Council of Ireland, and she was a founder of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre in the 1980s.
She is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin in 2024.
