“Who wouldn’t want to do it?” replies 2025 Co Meath Rose Ella Bannon when asked why she entered this year’s Rose of Tralee International Festival.
Ms Bannon is one of the 32 women from nine countries competing for the title of Rose at Tralee at the annual event in Co Kerry from August 15th to 19th.
She and the other Roses gathered in her hometown of Trim, Co Meath, on Monday for a banquet and dance, but they were up early on Tuesday for a day of photographs aboard the MV Cill Airne ship in Dublin’s docklands.
Their tour is 10 days long and filled with photoshoots, parades, TikTok clips and lots of chatting. Bottles of water are on every table, staving off any hoarseness in advance of the competition days on Monday and Tuesday next week.
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A cheer went up when presenters Dáithí Ó Sé and Kathryn Thomas joined the competitors for a group photo on the deck, the Roses’ rainbow of dresses standing out against the presenters’ black and white.
But alongside the glamour of the show, many Roses are ready to talk about the health issues that have affected them as women.
Texas Rose Sara Costa (21) said many women face being dismissed in the healthcare system.
She had been eyeing the competition since she was 12, having studied Irish dancing alongside previous Roses. She had planned to enter the competition as soon as she turned 18, but decided it was the wrong time. A few months later she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
“The first nurse ... sent me home with [paracetamol] and said, ‘see how it feels in a couple of weeks’. I had to go back to a different doctor and really advocate for myself.”
Luxembourg Rose Aisling Guilfoyle (25) spoke about her experience with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which affects menstrual cycles and can cause weight gain and infertility.
“The fact is, when you have [it], there’s no remedy or medication that you can take to make the symptoms better, other than looking after your nutrition and sports and exercise,” she says.
Ms Guilfoyle has been learning from her mother and grandmother, both dietitians, about how to use a low-inflammatory diet to reduce her symptoms. She sees the Rose of Tralee as an opportunity to advocate for women with PCOS and to share knowledge about managing the disease.
A record four contestants this year are mothers, which has been a comfort to Armagh Rose Erin McCormac. Parenting her 15-month-old while competing “can be stressful at times”, she says.
However, “it’s really special to know there’s other girls close by who know exactly how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking of”.
She entered the competition four months after giving birth to her son, even though she didn’t feel back to herself. “I thought that’s maybe why I should do it. I was getting a bit fed up with seeing ‘perfect’ on TV and on social media.”
She explained how her sense of connection to other mothers has driven her concern for how post-partum mental health issues are dealt with on the island of Ireland. “It’s such a difficult and vulnerable time,” she says.
“Mothers shouldn’t have to just go to a general psychiatric ward; it’s not a safe place to bring your baby to, to bring your family to.” She criticised the fact that there remains no specialist mother-and-baby unit on the island of Ireland for mothers to go to post-partum.
McCormac plans to use the platform gained through the competition to help raise funds for a psychiatric mother and baby unit in Belfast.
