Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
AFTER ROUND ONE on TV3 last week, it was RTÉ’s turn to have the party leaders debate each other in Limerick tonight.
Renua’s Lucinda Creighton, the SocDems’ Stephen Donnelly and People Before Profit’s Richard Boyd Barrett joined Enda, Joan, Micheál and Gerry on stage at the University Concert Hall.
Claire Byrne had the unenviable task of moderating proceedings as the seven party leaders went at it….
1. An altogether more civil affair
Despite this being a seven-way debate it was far less shouty than last week’s slugfest on TV3. A lot of that had to do with the excellent work of Byrne who, bluntly, took no bull.
Several times she cut the leaders off when they started squabbling and talking over each other. It proved effective and popular with the audience:
2. Enda holds his punches…
Perhaps it was the format and the fact there were three extra voices to be heard this week, but it was hard to escape the sense that the Taoiseach was once again silent for long periods.
Kenny seemed to think that staying out of the rows would benefit him. Perhaps it did, but it also allowed the others, like Donnelly and Richard Boyd-Barrett, to make their case, while Adams and Martin squabbled, and Burton answered questions she wasn’t asked.
3. … and consults the archives
It’s clear that the government parties are set on targeting Micheál Martin and the Taoiseach repeatedly went to his notes to drag up the Fianna Fáil leader’s past. First he recalled how Martin told Bloomberg and Fox News in 2010 that Ireland wouldn’t need a bailout.
Later, Martin staunchly defended his record on health, saying he “disagreed fundamentally” with Byrne’s analysis of it as she put a question to him.
“Rubbish, rubbish!” shouted Kenny across the studio before he dipped back into his notes and dragged up a pledge Martin made as minister for health in 2002 when he said the government would “permanently abolish waiting lists in two years”.
Broadly, Martin didn’t have as good a night as he did last week, the format not allowing him to aim as many direct criticisms at the government as he did on TV3.
4. Stephen Donnelly vs. The Establishment
It was flagged beforehand that the SocDems could do well out of this debate and indeed Stephen Donnelly, one of their three leaders, was a strong performer throughout. His basic argument was that the political establishment was wrong on everything, from cutting USC to the best way of supporting businesses.
He made the difficult argument that now is not the time to abolish USC with “economic storm clouds gathering”. It was a view that diverged from most of the other leaders on stage, but it might well have appealed to voters who aren’t buying the current round of auction politics from the others.
Perhaps most interestingly Donnelly found a fan in the Taoiseach, who knows well that he might need the SocDems after the election:
But Burton was less enamoured by the Wicklow TD, no doubt aware that the SocDems are threatening to take Labour votes all over the country:
5. Angry Gerry
There was a particularly heated exchange between the two opposition leaders early on in the debate when Micheál Martin said that Adams had been denying IRA membership for 30 years and expected people to believe them.
Adams challenged Martin to go to the gardaí if he had any information to that effect. Martin shot back that there isn’t a guard in the country who believes Adams.
But by that stage the Sinn Féin leader had launched into an extended rant, with his voice raised and lots of gesticulating, about how all of this didn’t help the homeless children, people on trolleys and others all over the country.
Adams’s anger at facing the usual questions over his past clearly got to him and he seemed more shaken by it than he was last week on TV3. Twice he referred to Martin, Kenny and Burton as “the three amigos” but the joke fell flat on both occasions.
6. Richard Boyd-Barrett takes off
The AAA-PBP representative was fairly subdued early on, but when he excoriated the government over cutting the dole for under 26s he got the first round of applause of the night. Buoyed by that he increased the volume and the hand waving and before you knew it was just like his regular shouty Dáil performances.
“If the public sector does not create jobs, our young people will not come back here,” he said to yet more applause. They were putting their hands together again when the Dún Laoghaire TD slammed the government for closing down local emergency department services. On the clap-o-meter, Boyd-Barrett was the undoubted winner of the night.
7. Joan struggles again
The Tánaiste is having her first experience of TV debates in this election and, to be frank, she just isn’t at the races. She was the worst performer last week and she struggled again tonight. Several times she spoke about issues completely unrelated to the question she was asked.
When asked about broken promises, Burton spoke about the economy growing by an average of 3.1% over the next five years. When asked about jobs, she talked about the government having reopened Templemore and recruiting extra gardaí. In the section on housing, the moderator’s intervention was telling:
At one point, Burton began speaking over Kenny to make a point that he broadly agreed with while trying to make his own. He looked rather bemused at the intervention.
8. Lucinda on the edge
The Renua leader was to the far-right of the stage and seemed to get very few opportunities to contribute.
She talked of the need to depoliticise health, overhaul the tax system and introduce a flat tax, and got time to speak about the party’s controversial three strikes crime policy. But none of it seemed to enthuse the audience. Of the three smaller party leaders, she was the least relevant on the night.
9. Claire Byrne for Taoiseach
It’s somewhat cliched these days to praise a moderator after a scrappy debate, but Byrne really was excellent. At no stage tonight did the debate get out of control or even threaten to get out of control.
She cut off the leaders when they started shouting at each other and she wasn’t afraid to challenge them when she felt they needed challenging:
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
How the hell did it cost $1400 to build. You’d make that for 80 quid.
for 1400 he could have bought a mobile home or a serious tent/camper combo with gas cooker and electrics.
I’d say they journal forgot the decimal point.
.
It should read $11.40
I hope so, otherwise that lad is a dope.
He used the same builder that put up the temporary housing units for €190,000 a pop……….
He could have used anything up to 8 sheets of marine plywood for this, add couple of tins of polish to give a good finish, it has timber internal framing too, given that hes an illustrator probably needed to buy a circular saw for couple of hundred, possibly had to buy his own bed and quilting. strip light could be 40-50 quid. Cost would add up easily enough.
A top of the range 12v leisure battery with trickle or automatic charger or even solar panels to keep his ‘lights’ on, a high end makita circular saw, the timber and ply if he replaced with oak, and if he polished it in gold dust (and that doesn;t look polished to me) wouldn’t cost him 1400
Sorry man, but that could be made for free. I think it’s an error in the article. If not, his rent is the least of his worries.
Just glanced at his blog and he did indeed pay 1300 to have it made. Talk about stupidity.
but how would you know how much things cost is SF ? Just asking.
I checked. It’s far cheaper than here. Googled the costs of materials. I also import tools and camping gear from the US regularly as it’s half the price of the UK.
Didn’t even get a lick of ronseal
Fair play – just asking. Maybe it includes land rent !!!
€1500 to live in a plywood crate? I have a barna shed he can have for a grand a month
He’s probably wondering why he hasn’t had any takers on his great idea. If he popped down to any industrial estate or any importers in SF, he would have got that for free. They would be more than happy for him to take it away.
He pays $400 to live there not 1500
And put it where Smeghead?
Put it on a campsite in san francisco for 10 dollars a night. Buy a camper for 1400.
It’ll be some craic in the pod when he has kids.
What’s the point, other than to fulfill some need for attention on social media?
Shared a room a few times in university/J1 etc. One room, two beds… No big deal. Plenty of people I know who grew up in the 80′s/90′s shared a room with a sibling. No one ever saw the need to build a ridiculous crate to live in.
I really don’t know how to take the current generation of 20 somethings and the way they carry on.
That’s true Drew, some of the places I shared in my college years would make the 20+ generation toes curl, one room with two beds, kitchenette in a corner of the room, and one had a shared bathroom and loo down the hall. It’d been much cheaper for him to go and buy a damn bed, oh and in no way did that thing cost 1400.
Your comment shows what are ridiculous nation we’ve become that apparently it hasn’t been acceptable for siblings to share a room since the 90′s. Don’t think we need to look to the US for ridiculousness.
is it unacceptable I wonder. Families are smaller I suppose as the cost of raising kids is now so high. Well for most of us anyway,
He may avoid the stout whilst living in that thing. One fart and he’s brown bread.
That’s why he put in the sky light.
Wanna come back to my pod?
Nevermind him, can you imagine having that in your sitting room! No one take any notice of the man in the box. It would just be so awkward
Hope the landlords don’t see this article b giving them ideas
If my missus sees this, that’s me done for !
Wife jokes are so 90′s
This was supposed to be posted yesterday I take it…?
I was written shortly after it appeared on Reddit ;)
It blows all the irish building regulations out the windows and health and safety will probably get toffee nosed about pod living too.
Jaysus my dogs kennel is nearly that size
rental opportunity !!!
W**k box
That’s existing. Just. Don’t show Alan Kelly. He will have us all back to tenements in no time.
Looks cosy.
Looks like what dob and edna would dream up to solve the housing crisis at a substancial cost to the taxpayer of course
Sure does anyone remember some of the adverts online over here ? Someone was actually advertising a bed for rent under the stairs in a house .
It would be funny if his mate put the couch in front of the entrance…nice chest of drawers behind the couch as well to give him a bit of a challange
Sure makes moving out of the parents home look ‘great’!
He won’t get his hole in there
Um fire hazard?
I hope he doesn’t get an Irish roommate. There’d be a firelog and a shovel of coal in on top of him
And the top of his box used as a bar counter.
80? With the bedding, the storage space, shelves/desk, the lights etc?
Yes. A saw, a measuring tape, and those are fairy lights operated by a simple battery most likely, the bedding you’d pick up in a second hand shop or second hand for peanuts. People dump stuff like that, nor a mind say sell it.
Tbh, it’s comical anyone would spend 1400 on a dog kennel. And a dog kennel would be better built than that yoke. I’d knock that together in 2-3 hours.
And I’d do it for free by picking up pallets.
Uhhhh yeah…
$20 for cheap used bedding… $800 to rid your apartment of bed bugs, or loose your security deposit.
Yeah Drew, cos landlords the world over are known to buy all their furniture brand new for lettings.
Does he have a rest room in there ?
Where’s Dave? Ah, he moved in to the sideboard…
America, the greatest country on earth? You wouldn’t have people living like this in the third world.
The Japanese would just love that accommodation.
“Workaholics who live in rabbit warrens”.
.
What a tool
This was written and published just to shake the housing market a bit more in ireland….. that would be the next option for landlords trying to get more money for an apt
Man in a box right there
have your say