Journalist, author and presenter Matt Cooper’s political astuteness, business acumen and remarkable knowledge of news and current affairs make him the first choice for anyone seeking a highly engaging speaker or conference host.
Witty, entertaining and informed, the naturally gregarious and inquisitive Cooper has a proven track record for holding an audience’s attention and for offering insights into topics which you might not hear elsewhere.
This is because at heart, he is fascinated by people and why they do what they do, whether in business, politics or, his other great passion, sport (GAA and rugby), so he is able to make any topic more human, accessible and comprehensible, from the economics of Brexit to finance, broadcasting, media and business.
He is a former editor of The Sunday Tribune, having been appointed at the age of 30 in 1996. He left for a career in radio in 2003 but continues to write a leader page column for the Irish Daily Mail each Wednesday and also writes on business, economics and politics for The Sunday Business Post. He was twice National Journalist of the Year and twice Business Journalist of the Year.
Today, Matt Cooper presents and edits the daily news, current affairs and sports programme The Last Word on Today FM from Monday to Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm. He is also an experienced television presenter. He currently presents the current affairs show The Tonight Show with Ivan Yates that airs four times weekly on TV3 at 11pm. In sports, he hosted TV3’s Rugby World Cup coverage in 2007 and 2015 and will be hosting the station’s Six Nations Coverage from 2018 when it takes over as host broadcaster for the Irish market. He was previously anchor for the six years that TV3 broadcast championship GAA games from 2008 to 2013.
He is the author of four critically acclaimed and commercially successful books: 'The Maximalist', his biography of the iconic Irish sporting, business and media figure Tony O’Reilly, was published in 2015; 'Who Really Runs Ireland' was published in 2009; 'How Ireland Really Went Bust' was published in 2011. Most recently, Matt has published "Michael O’Leary: Turbulent Times for the Man Who Made Ryanair".
"I thought Matt did an excellent job and managed to keep the audience interested for well over an hour. The format worked extremely well and there was a lot of interaction from the audience. Matt was very generous with his time and also caught up with some of our customers for a drink after the event which was much appreciated." - Michael Callaghan, CMS Distribution, May 2014
"Matt, you were great last night and thank you so much for having such patience with a particularly raucous crowd!" - Billy Huggard, Operations Director, Mediateam, 2014
"The audience reaction has been overwhelmingly positive that the right "master of ceremonies" was conducting the evening. Despite their attempts to distract and heckle, you did a great job keeping the event on track and helping us to deliver another successful outing for the ICT Industry in Ireland." - Billy Huggard, Operations Director, Mediateam
"The event went really well... Matt was well received and we would consider running this type of event again in the future" - Larry Taylor, BT Ireland, January 2013
"He was excellent and proved a huge hit with our audience. His speech was very entertaining and he did a superb Q&A session for us. Matt was also very sociable with our guests in the bar afterwards.He is a thorough gent and helped make our Christmas lunch a very successful one." - Gerard Sproule, C/O LotusWorks, December 2012
"Matt was spot on again and really added to the quality of our conference." - Barry Ennis,Sales Director, PensionSource, December 2012
"Just wanted to say thank you so much for your work at the Undergraduate Awards events this year. Hope you enjoyed the events, at least as much as possible when you're working. You were a pleasure to work with and extremely professional which allowed me to relax knowing it was in your capable hands. You were superb, myself and everyone involved thought you did a fantastic job." - Richard Harris, Events Co-Ordinator, Google Ireland
"Matt Cooper did a remarkable job for us in chairing the IBEC HR Leadership Summit 2011 and managed to engage the audience and get the very best out of the national and international line up of speakers for the benefit of the 500 CEO's, HR Directors and other business leaders who attended Ireland's leading HR conference" - Brendan McGinty, IBEC, October 2011
"We were delighted to have you as master of ceremonies and you guided the proceedings excellently. I have received fantastic feedback from the delegates so many thanks for joining us in Galway." - Stephen O'Riordan, Chief Executive, Londis
