Kieran Hegarty

Hegarty graduated from Queen's University, Belfast, with a first class honours in Celtic Languages and Literature.

After a brief period as a teacher, Hegarty joined BBC NI in 1983 as the region's first producer of Irish language programmes. Later an Irish Language Unit was established under Kieran's leadership, with many of the programmes being written by him.

The initial output was on radio but eventually expanded to television. A particular success was the Irish language learning series ‘Now You're Talking’.