In 1993 the Eurovision Song Contest took place in Millstreet, Co. Cork, Ireland.

This was a mammoth undertaking but the viewers would not have known as it was superbly directed by Anita Notaro from RTÉ, the Irish broadcaster.

We have received the sad news that she has passed away after a long illness.

Ms Notaro had many credits to her name, including Irish television programmes like Take a look at me now, the long running drama Fair city and coverage of the General Election.

Some years ago she decided to leave her work in television and follow her passion of writing. Her achievements in this field included winning the Popular Fiction Book of the Year prize at the Irish Book Awards in 2008.

In 2005 she had the first of her battles with illness as she was diagnosed with breast cancer but the battle that she was unable to win was against front-temporal dementia in 2011. This is a much more rare form of the illness which progressed so quickly that she was unable to write again after completing her sixth book entitled A moment like this.

We send our condolences to her husband, Gerry McGuinness, and her family.

Here is a sample of her work with the opening of the Eurovision Song Contest 1993.

Stay tuned to esctoday for further news on the Eurovision Song Contest