DON’T EXPECT TO see Joan Burton and Mary Lou McDonald squaring off one-on-one in Vincent Browne’s studios (or anyone else’s for that matter) before the next election.
Asked this afternoon whether the mooted encounter would take place, the Tánaiste pointed out that she regularly debated the high-profile Sinn Féin TD in the Dáil – and said that as a party leader, it was Gerry Adams she should be debating, rather than anybody else.
“I’m the leader of the Labour party. I’ll be debating with Gerry Adams,” she told reporters, at an event to mark International Women’s Day in Dublin city centre today.
She said she had already debated the Sinn Féin leader, and that given the “gap in terms of his understanding of the economy here in the Republic” there was “an awful lot more to debate with him”.
Speaking at her party’s Ard Fheis yesterday, McDonald re-iterated her challenge to debate the Tánaiste “anywhere, any time”.
“Joan Burton challenged me to a debate, both Vincent Browne and RTÉ offered to facilitate the debate, but Joan has changed her mind,” she insisted.
Asked about offers from TV stations to hold a debate, Burton again referred to the fact that she had recently taken on Adams one-on-one on Claire Byrne’s RTÉ show, adding that if any other proposals came in for debates with the SF leader, the party would “look at them and give them due consideration”.
Burton told reporters at the Labour conference last weekend that she was happy to debate the Sinn Féin deputy leader on the economy “to see if she has any plans to get people back to work”.
The pair have frequently clashed on a Thursday afternoon in the Dáil, when the Tánaiste usually takes questions from the deputy leaders of opposition parties.
There have been some particularly robust, entertaining and newsworthy exchanges between the two most prominent female politicians in the country in recent times.
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