Dolores flying the flag for Kilbeggan in Voice of Ireland

We just can’t help ourselves in Westmeath: we just keep turning out great singers.

Joe Dolan, Niall Horan, Ailish Tynan, Emmet Cahill, Fr Ray Kelly – and now, Fr Ray’s first cousin once-removed, Dolores Kelly.

Twenty-eight year old Dolores is singing on the Voice of Ireland this Sunday night, and hoping that she gets a chance to break into the big time.

The young Kilbeggan woman is a first year business student at Moate Business College.
“I decided I wanted a career and not just a job,” she says, explaining that for six years, she worked at SuperValu in Moate before taking up a job as deli assistant at Centra in Kilbeggan four years ago.

Dolores reveals that there was a life-changing event that caused her to examine where her life was going: “I was supposed to get married, on Friday September 13, 2013,” she says.

However the two reconsidered, and did not go ahead with the marriage, and so her focus on singing and looking for a new career are the result.

Dolores already has considerable experience under her belt, having performed widely across the midlands with a number of local bands, including the Gin Soaked Coopers, and Wonka’s Whiskey Factory.

“I have always sung: in fact my parents have cassettes of me singing when I was just three years old,” she says, revealing that she used to rope her brother, Stephen, and sister, Louise, into her “productions”.

Dolores’ parents are Michael and Kathleen, and they are looking forward to seeing her perform – especially since her chosen song is the Killers’ “All These Things”, one of her mother’s favourite songs.

Altogether, there are twelve contestants on the show, the second last of the blind auditions.

Singer Caoimhe McCarthy from Mullingar qualified in January for the next round when she won her way onto Team Rachel.

• The Voice of Ireland, Sunday, February 7, 6.30pm