As a news reporter, RTÉ has sent Boucher-Hayes to the Kosovo War in 1999, Palestine's second Intifada in 2000, Iran, the 9/11 attacks in New York City and the U.S.'s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
[1] Boucher-Hayes was educated in Newtown School, Waterford, and began his journalism career as a freelance contributor to local newspapers before going on to study History and Politics in University College Dublin (UCD).
He worked as RTÉ's reporter for numerous historic events, including stints in Southeast Asia (post Asian tsunami), New York City (for September 11 attacks) and Iraqi Kurdistan (during the American-led invasion which preceded the Iraq War in 2003).
His coverage of the 14-year-old death of Brian Rossiter whilst in the custody of gardaí won him the Media Justice Award in 2005.
The show was given its own segment on Today with Pat Kenny the morning before broadcast, with Boucher-Hayes presenting the evidence in a style that was compared to a "scene where Hercule Poirot explains the whole thing to an assembly of slow-witted guests in the drawing room".