Dan Paddy Andy O’Sullivan

The following report on the match-making career of Dan Paddy Andy O’Sullivan was compiled by a ‘staff reporter’ in The Kerryman in 1963 and it made the front page because of an offer Dan made to a priest in South Kerry.

The report is as follows:

Dan Paddy Andy O’Sullivan of Lyreacrompane, Ireland’s best known professional matchmaker, this week offered to help Fr. John Scanlan, the parish priest of Tousist, in his bid to solve his parish’s marriage problem.

There have been only two marriages in Tousist parish in the last four years and Father Scanlan thinks that a matchmaker is the only person who can help bring the district’s marriage-shy bachelors and spinsters to the altar.

Within the Parish

He has specified that the matchmaker must be from within the parish itself but Dan Paddy Andy feels that after over thirty years experience he can help in some way.

“I made my first match the year of the Congress and have arranged as many as ten a year since and I feel that I am qualified to at least offer advice on Tousist’s problem.”

The 62 year old Lyreacrompane farmer said that he would take on the training of a Tousist man at matchmaking or he would do the matchmaking himself with the assistance of anybody from that district who Fr. Scanlan would recommend.

A Matter for the Priest

“That’s a matter for the priest but I will be very happy to do anything I can in my power to keep the population from dying out altogether,” he added.

Dan proudly boasts that not one of the matches he arranged over his thirty years at the job has gone wrong.

“I credit this to the precautions I take to ensure that the couples suit one another,” he said.

“The couple must be sincere in their desire to get married and must honour and respect one another. I do my utmost to make sure there will be no regrets.”

The matchmaker admitted that his main yardstick in measuring the success of a marriage was the number of children born to the couple.

One Child = Success

“Even one child means success but a big family shows that the match has been very fruitful and is most gratifying to the matchmaker,” he said.

Dan gives his blessing to the marriage bureau set up by the Saint Vincent de Paul Society in some areas.

“It is the Lord’s wish that the peoples of the earth should multiply and any society that tries to foster that wish is doing good,” he said.

“But I do not think that people will have the same confidence in a marriage bureau as in the experienced matchmaker.

Financial Arrangements

What about the financial arrangements ?

“Usually I get a pound or two as introduction money and I expect a small dowry when the marriage takes place and when the first child is born,” Dan said.

The Lyreacrompane man, who is married with a family, got a bad attack last winter and is not as active now as in former years but he arranged two matches last year – one in East Kerry and the other in North Cork.

“And I’ll keep on making matches as long as there is a demand for my services,” he said.

Dan Paddy Andy Festival Weekend

The 26th Dan Paddy Andy Festival will be held in Lyreacrompane over the coming bank holiday weekend from August 2nd to 5th inclusive.