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Ireland placed 12th in Tuesday's Eurovision semi-final

Ireland’s Wild Youth scored two places away from qualifying for last night’s final.

SWEDEN MATCHED IRELAND’S record for the most Eurovision wins last night, taking its 7th victory as the competition’s organisers announced that Ireland had placed 12th in this week’s first semi-final.

Winning contestant Loreen received 538 points last night with her song Tattoo and had already won the Eurovision previously in 2012,  becoming the second person after Ireland’s Johnny Logan to win two Eurovision titles.

Ireland’s Wild Youth were the sixth performance on Tuesday night’s semi-final and scored two places away from qualifying for last night’s final.

The band’s performance of ‘We Are One’ received ten points, Eurovision revealed, calculating their final score by dividing their points by the total points given in the semi-final.

This marks a slight improvement from Brooke Scullion’s performance of ‘That’s Rich’ in Turin last year, which was voted 15th out of the 18 participating countries in its semi-final.

This week’s semi-finals were a solely public vote, in a change to previous years.

With the exception of one year, Ireland have not progressed from the weekday shows since 2013.

However, the head of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has said that it is always possible for countries to turn their Eurovision fortunes around, citing the UK’s success in the 2022 contest.

The UK’s Sam Ryder placed second last year, after Ukraine, with his song ‘Space Man’, which led to the competition being hosted in Liverpool this year due to security concerns about the contest being held in Ukraine.

Noel Curran, the Director General of the EBU – speaking to The Journal earlier this week in Liverpool – said he wasn’t concerned at the prospect of countries “losing heart” during unsuccessful periods at the contest where they may not qualify for the final. 

“The UK got zero points or very little points for so many years and then they came back … so things can turn around for everybody and there’s always that sense that things can turn around,” he said.

“We don’t see any signs that countries are saying, ‘we’re not qualifying, we’re going to withdraw’. The event is too big for that I think.”

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    Mute alphanautica
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    Jan 8th 2017, 8:27 AM

    If collectively an enterprise lacks commercial merit it tends to go out of business.

    The curse of the private sector.

    190
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    Mute Rose Sexy
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:46 AM

    Will virgin give us utv back.

    95
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    Mute james
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    Jan 8th 2017, 9:41 AM

    Bad very bad ,crap station

    149
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    Mute Congress Tart
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    Jan 8th 2017, 9:56 AM

    “We are still proud of what we managed to do.”

    No offence, but you did nothing.

    134
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    Mute Arien
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    Jan 8th 2017, 8:15 AM

    No different to any other redundancy situation or merger. Thousands have experienced this, suck it up.

    117
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    Mute Alan b..
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    Jan 8th 2017, 8:28 AM

    People at UTV thought us Irish were silly little creatures who would swallow up their sad excuse of TV did they think we were stupid

    197
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    Mute TehJurolan
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    Jan 8th 2017, 12:12 PM

    Calling it UTV Ireland was the first joke decision – a station that showed 95% British content – most of which was chav sh*te.

    111
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    Mute Colin O Leary
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:47 AM

    Terrible comments by some, kicking people when they are down, best of luck in the future whoever lost a job

    103
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    Mute Paul Devlin
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:19 AM

    Anyone who thought UTV Ireland would produce a Channel 4 News style show was either a bit deluded or had never viewed UTV news. One is a proper news show the other is largely about sick kids/puppies that are being ‘brave, rugby and sucking up to old soldiers and the British monarch. Hardly the stuff an ambitious young hack should aspire to

    97
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    Mute Ciara McCorley
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    Jan 8th 2017, 11:22 AM

    The announcer between programs said “UTV island”…. Couldn’t even say Ireland! That’s bugged me from the beginning!

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    Mute Dónal O'Flynn
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    Jan 8th 2017, 4:44 PM

    @Ciara McCorley: Perhaps it was intentional? Ulster (Television!) says yes?

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    Mute ted hagan
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:25 PM

    @Ciara McCorley:
    Yea Peter Robinson of the DUP also seemed to find it difficult to say Ireland.

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    Mute Les Behan
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:06 AM

    ““This was a brand new employer with a brand new national news service, so it presented a great opportunity for young journalists who were coming up the ranks. To be part of a team that launches something new, there’s a buzz that you just don’t get in another job.”

    Yeah that’s why they then hired Pat Kenny! The dogs on the street knew this was going to fail the minute it was announced.

    67
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    Mute Michael McGuinness
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:42 AM

    Rubbish station, showed repeatit UTV, ITV. Don’t think new channel 3Be, be any better.

    66
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    Mute john g mcgrath
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    Jan 8th 2017, 1:07 PM

    Tallaght T V expanding

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    Mute Veroníca
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    Jan 8th 2017, 8:41 AM

    Will poor Pat Kenny still have a job or will he have to go back to RTE with his tail between his legs!!! Never do for pat to be outta a job!

    64
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    Mute Justin Gillespie
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:00 AM

    @Veroníca: Another half wit who doesn’t bother reading the article before coming out with hateful, half witted nonsense.

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    Mute Pauliebhoy
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:07 AM

    And 29 people at this age agreeing too

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    Mute Pauliebhoy
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:08 AM

    *stage

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    Mute Niall O'Keeffe
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:08 AM

    @Veroníca: “Poor” Pat Kenny? Who works for both TV3 and Newstalk? Somehow, I think he’ll be okay.

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    Mute Congress Tart
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    Jan 8th 2017, 10:26 AM

    @Niall O’Keeffe: Turn on your sarcasm detector, dumbass.

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    Mute Bean Ui Mise
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    Jan 8th 2017, 11:55 AM

    Why are people knocking PK for working? Plenty people contribute nothing.

    32
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    Mute Veroníca
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    Jan 8th 2017, 5:14 PM

    I have no doubt he will Niall! He can always retire on his healthy savings!

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    Mute alan hopkins
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    Jan 8th 2017, 11:16 AM

    More repeats by a crap station. Won’t be watching

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    Mute nialls
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    Jan 8th 2017, 11:21 AM

    Good because it will be difficult to watch from next week

    43
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    Mute Patrick James Walsh
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    Jan 8th 2017, 12:15 PM

    Maybe if UTV Ireland had scheduled programmes that people actually wanted to watch, if might have succeeded, after all they had access to the entire ITV network, it`s as if they didn`t want to succeed, bizzare, go figure.

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    Mute David Walsh
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    Jan 8th 2017, 12:49 PM

    @Patrick James Walsh: They actually hadn’t access to the entire ITV network though. Both ITV the company and ITV the network had anything to do with UTV Ireland bar licencing some TV shows to them.

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    Mute Max Johnson Powers
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    Jan 8th 2017, 5:30 PM

    They had access to content from ITV Studios. That’s how they had the Graham Norton Show.

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    Mute David Walsh
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    Jan 9th 2017, 12:06 AM

    @Max Johnson Powers: No, they had access to show some programmes. That was negotiated between them and the programmes owners.

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    Mute cyril.1
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    Jan 8th 2017, 11:46 AM

    Ducking shite station with shite presenters

    24
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    Mute Terry Cahill
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    Jan 8th 2017, 1:34 PM

    Good riddance to it ! Total failure to deliver ! Also an insult to the deaf community with no subtitles available on prime time shows like Midsummer murders ! Should not even have been allowed to broadcast. Paid no attention to complaints and were virtually uncontactable. And you don’t have to ask the football lovers what they thought of the disappearance of the international soccer matches that they would have seen on the UTV as we had it before. Say nothing about the reappearance of ” The Plank” aka Pat Kenny ! On yer bike … and quick about it ! .

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    Mute Irish Cottage Rental
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    Jan 8th 2017, 7:39 PM

    One island – two UTVs – was destined to fail. Bring back UTV from Belfast.

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    Mute Jason Pigott
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    Jan 8th 2017, 4:47 PM

    Sorry to say, but as a viewer utv Ireland was crap, they tried to pull the wool over viewers eyes with so called new shows that we’re constantly repeats even playing Lorraine twice in a day I’m mean seriously just give us back utv and stop all the nonsense

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    Mute Sean Buckley
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    Jan 8th 2017, 5:01 PM

    All that money wasted.We were happy with UTV in the first place.

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    Mute Imnotrodten
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    Jan 8th 2017, 8:27 AM

    Oh no.

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    Mute Vivion Styles
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    Jan 9th 2017, 4:37 PM

    Lost foot football and rugby so this UTV can go and f&ck off. I never bothered to even see what was on cause I knew they only show absolute crap. Great tat its gone…

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