Una O'Hagan | |
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Born | 1962 Dublin, Ireland |
Nationality | Irish |
Education | Dublin Institute of Technology |
Occupation | Journalist, newsreader |
Years active | 1983-present |
Notable credit(s) | RTÉ News |
Una O'Hagan is a newscaster with Radio Telefís Éireann, Ireland's national radio and television station, where she has presented the main television news programmes Six One News, Nine O'Clock News and One O'Clock News including all other news bulletins on both radio and television. For nine years, from 1996 to 2005, she co-presented the station's flagship news programme Six One News with Bryan Dobson.
Una was born in Dublin in 1962 and attended Dominican College, Eccles Street. She studied journalism at the Dublin Institute of Technology, graduating in 1982. The following year, 1983, she joined RTÉ, where she worked as a newsreader on RTÉ Radio 2. In early 1986, she became a member of RTÉ's news reporting staff.
In 1990, in Zambia, she met and interviewed Nelson Mandela, who had been released from captivity on Robben Island just two weeks earlier. In 1992, she accompanied Ireland's first woman president, Mary Robinson, on a state visit to Australia, having already covered her election as Uachtaráin na hÉireann in 1990.
She also reported on the release of Beirut hostage Brian Keenan in 1990, the negotiations in Brussels for the new EU constitution in 2003, and she co-presented RTÉ's coverage of the events of 9/11.
As a newscaster, she hosted live programmes on the deaths of former Taoisigh Jack Lynch in 1999 and Garret Fitzgerald in 2011, the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland in 2011, and the American Presidential Election in 2012.
She is married to author and former RTÉ broadcaster, Colm Keane. They lost their only son Seán to cancer in 2007. Together, they collaborated on the bestselling book Animal Crackers: Irish Pet Stories, published in June 2016. She currently lives in County Waterford.