Leaders’ debate review: Were all the participants tranquillised en route to the studio?

How many politicians does it take to change an election? The answer clearly isn’t 10 – the number arranged behind lecterns for a dreary leaders’ debate hosted by Upfront With Katie Hannon on RTÉ One. The fear in advance of the event was that it might descend into chaos. If only. Instead of the anticipated anarchy in Montrose, RTÉ serves up a bland bacchanalia of bloviating that chugs along in the slow lane.
There are occasional sparks – though nothing to knock viewers out of the stupor into which they may have slipped early in the evening. Taoiseach Simon Harris clashes with Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald when she accuses him of “faux concern” for children amid lengthy waiting times for scoliosis treatment.
There is also a testy exchange between McDonald, arranged to the far right of the stage like an unpopular sibling at a family gathering, and Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin (in the middle) about the idea that “100 years of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil” is inherently negative.
Coming out swinging, Martin says the “Sinn Féin movement … opposed everything that built this country”. McDonald criticises the “tone of his remarks”. Paint dries. The earth spins. Time creaks to a halt.
Hannon is a calm and collected moderator – arguably to a fault during a broadcast that cries out for extra pizazz. She begins by hoping for an “energetic debate” but adds “the public at home deserves to hear everyone out”. Alas, the debate is not especially energetic, and, as a TV spectacle rather than a showpiece for Irish democracy, might have benefited from being a little shoutier. The country’s future is at stake – why have all the participants apparently been tranquillised en route to the studio?
The 10 politicians include representatives from across the spectrum – politically and in the fashion sense. Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit wears a student union fleece that invites you to wonder whether sensible knitwear can be inherently socialist (yes, it can). Harris meanwhile encompasses every shade of grey in suit, hair and personality, as if he’s walked on straight from a black and white movie (alas not a silent one).
RTÉ shunts the most divisive topics to the back end of the evening. The housing crisis and the immigration debate are discussed right at the end, as the clock is running down. Not that the politicians are all that keen to get stuck in anyway. The exception is Aontú’s Peadar Tóibín, who inserts himself into the exchanges much as anti-abortion campaigners would wish to insert their views into the private lives of Irish women.
Nobody would want an Irish election to descend into a Donald Trump-style Punch and Judy show. But goodness does Upfront’s big powwow make for dull television. “Fair play to anyone who stayed up after two hours of that,” says Boyd Barrett in a post-debate interview. But of course, many will have switched off – or turned to Virgin Media One to watch Coleen Rooney battle cockroaches on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!. Give us two hours in the jungle any day over this frosty slog through the Irish political permafrost.