Daithi O Se is hopeful the Rose of Tralee will happen this year – and he defended the contest against claims it is outdated.
Daithi, 44, has been presenting the show for a decade and told how valuable it is to the county.
The Kerryman said: “I don’t know if it’s happening but I’m hopeful we’ll have a Rose of Tralee at some stage in 2021.
“We did a look back of my 10 years as host last year and you talk to the people of Tralee, what it means to them.
“Then there’s the economic side, it’s worth €10million a year to the town.
“For people who don’t like it, there’s nothing I’m going to say after 10 years hosting it at this stage that is going to change their mind.
“I won’t waste my time or their time.” And the proud host said he doesn’t listen to the critics.
He added: “I wouldn’t be bothered entertaining negativity, there’s so much begrudgery in the world at the moment with the whole pandemic.
“The pandemic is feeding enough negativity especially for me so I wouldn’t entertain that.
“This is what we’re doing, we’re doing it to enjoy ourselves and if you want to come along for the spin, you’re more than welcome. If not, that’s fine too.”
The dad of one heaped praise on the calibre of entrants to the contest over the decades.
He said: “If you go back to 1970, I’d imagine a lot of the contestants would have been nurses or teachers. The current Rose is a doctor. We’ve had occupational therapists, we’ve had the first gay rose, we had engineers, a great cross section of entrants.”
Daithi is urging the public to dig deep for Alzheimer’s Tea Day taking place virtually on May 6.
He added: “Some people never really came out of cocooning, I mean we’re out in the countryside where we live and my mother was walking and she’d be walking down the road with a mask on.
“I said, ‘Mam, you don’t have to wear the mask, way out in the country’.
“She didn’t meet one person but that’s the kind of thing that gets into older people’s heads. We really have to mind them.
“They are our mothers, fathers and grandparents, the people who’ve been there for us all our lives and we can’t turn our backs on them.
“My mum Kathleen came up to us around Christmas time, she’s with us which is great, she came up before the whole thing was locked down.”
