Prior to her broadcasting career, she worked as an actress on stage and TV in Ireland.
Her broadcasting work began with RTÉ Radio 1, for whom she presented programmes including Sounding Out and Brehan’s Law, the latter drawing on her earlier legal training.
As an undergraduate in the 1970s at Trinity College Dublin her law tutors included Mary McAleese who went on to become president of Ireland, and former Irish President and UN Commissioner, Mary Robinson.
Moving on from BBC Radio 4 in the late 1990s, she returned to the law to convert her Irish law degree to meet UK requirements and was called to the Bar in July 2002 under her birth name Daire Brennan-Holahan,[1] subsequently practising in criminal defence and prosecution.
[2] As a prosecutor she appeared on behalf of the National Probation Service and Local Authorities in prosecutions in the Crown Court, and as a defence barrister she represented clients on a wide array of charges.