The capital city’s main thoroughfare is not the most inconspicuous location for a photoshoot, but Anne Cassin is not fazed. It’s a dull, rain-sodden day in Dublin, and the Nationwide presenter is conferring and advising the Sunday Times photographer on the various locations on O’Connell Street that may work. It’s clear that she has done this before. “D’you know what — I was going to wear a pink suit, and then I thought, ‘No, I’ll look like a complete dose’,” she says, shaking her head. “So I said I’ll just wear something I feel good in. But look, this is Ireland. I’m actually quite chill about this,” she adds, gesturing out of the window at the tourists and locals wrestling umbrellas and dodging puddles. “We work in this kind of weather the whole time, so you just muddle through.”
Cassin has been a fixture on TV and radio for decades, so it’s only right that we meet in an institution befitting her stature. Luckily, the Gresham Hotel is also suited to her latest project: a three-part Nationwide special that marks 100 years since the May 1924 renaming of O’Connell Street (from the original Sackville Street). The miniseries, cohosted with Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh, focuses on the historical and social aspects of the street, from the statues to the GPO, and the enduring businesses that have remained in situ over the years.
Across the road, we can see the infamous Karen’s Diner — a recent addition to the streetscape — where rudeness is king and patrons pay to be insulted by the staff. Cassin grimaces, shaking her head. “Not my thing,” she says with a tight-lipped smile. Down the road is where the equally infamous Dublin Portal had been installed — before the live video link with New York was temporarily taken offline because of bystanders engaging in “inappropriate behaviour”. She is characteristically optimistic about the portal’s long-term prospects.
“I like the idea of it,” she says. “I think it’s giving a bit of love to this part of town. I remember when Dublin Bikes were first introduced and people said that a scheme like that would never work, that the bikes would be robbed and pegged in the river. But it didn’t happen; it was universally successful. I think there’s been massive investment by Dublin city council in these schemes. There’s an awareness now, and there’s so much good work being done in the public realm. I was sad when the plane trees were cut down on O’Connell Street, but now I don’t even remember them. I think the street is beginning to have an elegance about it again.”
Cassin is, in the words of her Twitter/X bio, a “Dublin girl, but interested in all Ireland”. Having previously presented the Dublin-focused magazine show Capital D for RTE, the Balbriggan native has fond memories of O’Connell Street and the city centre in general, growing up — despite its bad rap in recent years.
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“I’d have a great affection for it,” she says. “I would’ve always had a better knowledge of the northside of the city. We came in on the train, so it’d be Amiens Street, Talbot Street and coming up here — and then I would’ve gone out to the College of Commerce in Rathmines. So my memories are tied up with the odd pub, the cinema and Easons in a very big way — and going back even further, we had to come into Clerys to get the school uniform,” she says with a laugh. “I’m that old. I went to Loreto in Balbriggan, and you had to be measured and fitted out in Clerys for the most horrible bottle-green pinafore tunic.”
Cassin grew up on a farm that her mother, Nancy, inherited in north Co Dublin, while her father, Barry, was an actor. There was a short period of time — about a year, she says, when she was “very young” — when she briefly considered following in her dad’s footsteps. “But I never had a paid part in an actual play,” she recalls. “I don’t have it; I don’t have that need to do it. And looking back on my life and the kind of person I am, I couldn’t bear that precarious life. I’m too much of a ‘need the structure and solidity’ kind of person. The little performative bit that’s required for this job, that’s kind of enough.” She smiles wryly. “I could never have been Ophelia or Lady Macbeth.”
When she was a child, her father would point out the various statues lining O’Connell Street on their trips into town, but Cassin learnt lots of new facts while presenting the series too. It is not quite Paris’s Champs Élysées or Barcelona’s Las Ramblas, but “it has its own charm”, she says. “It was a residential street when it was built first, because the aristocracy had all their homes here — and after the Act of Union happened and they decamped to London it became more commercially focused. So I think it’s small and lovely, and I really hope the refurbishment works out.” She points to the newly revamped Clerys, and also at the site of the former Carlton Cinema as an example. “I’d like to see people living here again — or a mix of residential and commercial. Maybe that’s a little bit naive on my part. I think that connection with the living population, once it’s broken, it’s quite sad. It’s a street with a mix of commercial, social, history, your cinemas, your post office, even your maternity hospital — if you need it.”
The series acknowledges that O’Connell Street has gone through some difficult times over the years too — most recently during the riots in the city centre last year. “I kept my head down,” Cassin says of the news reports. “I didn’t want to look at it. I just got upset looking at the footage.” She perks up. “But it didn’t put me off coming in here, though; I’ve never felt unsafe here, honestly. And as a Dubliner I’m very proud of the place.”
Cassin is seen by many as a safe pair of hands on the national broadcaster, covering everything from sport to Crimecall and current affairs for RTE over the years. She is now in her 13th year as a presenter on the flagship programme Nationwide, while RTE has loomed large in Cassin’s personal life too. She first met her husband of almost 20 years, Donagh McGrath, in the sports department (he is now deputy head of RTE Sport). She grimaces when I ask how the mood is in the national broadcaster since the secret payment scandal broke last June.
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“Erm …” she says, leaning back and choosing her words carefully. “I have now decided to just … get on with things and focus on the job. Really and truly.” She nods. “It’s gone on a long time now and I’d hope it’s over. I need to stop reading stuff. It’s not that I’ve checked out of it, but it’s not really healthy for me — so I’d prefer to just concentrate on the job. And I’m lucky that I have a job that I can do that.”
It did affect her day-to-day life, she admits. “Ah yeah, of course it did,” she says. “But not once — and this is the truth — did I ever encounter any negative commentary from anybody on the ground when I was out. People seemed to be able to discern between the work that I do on Nationwide and what was happening in the organisation.” She shrugs. “It was a different thing.”
As her three children have grown older — they are now 25, 23 and 19 — she has less “working mother’s guilt” about being on the road so much. “When I started out [on Nationwide], two of them were teenagers,” she says. “I would routinely do a day’s work, get home, make dinner and then get in the car and drive to somewhere like Cork, or whatever. I don’t need to do that any more. There was a lot of juggling, but I was very supported by my husband; it’s not a one-man band by any means.”
This O’Connell Street miniseries, she says, is a prime example of what she loves about the job: blending interesting social and historical stories with the personal, including those of her fellow RTE presenter Joe Duffy, who shares his own memories of the street in one episode.
“I like people who have interesting stories — not necessarily people who are famous,” Cassin says with a shrug, reapplying her lipstick. She braces herself, striped umbrella in hand, to venture outside for her photoshoot. “I like strong personal stories and the characters you meet along the way. I’m a bit of a magpie,” she adds, smiling. “I’m pretty open to most content, you have to be. But yeah, interesting stories. Stories when you come away from it you say, ‘Wow! I’m glad I met that person.’”
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Nationwide Celebrates 100 Years of O’Connell Street airs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7pm on RTE1
