IF THE WEEK before the 2024 general election is remembered for anything, it’ll probably be for the first and last time that RTÉ ever hold a televised ten-way leader’s debate.
When the format was first announced it felt like something that had been organised by Vince McMahon and the WWE rather than the national broadcaster, a Royal Rumble affair, or perhaps Hell in a Cell. A Tables, Ladders, Chairs match would have guaranteed record viewership but RTÉ have presumably scaled back their furniture budget in the last year or so.
But listen, this is Raidió Teilifîs Éireann. They’re the pros. Surely, they’d have a system in place. Trap doors under each leader, perhaps, or an ejector-seat button that Katie Hannon could push any time any of them interrupted another to say “I didn’t interrupt you”.
As it turned out, RTÉ did have a system in place, but that system was to more or less ignore the seven people on stage who will absolutely never be Taoiseach. The system also included deciding the podium position of each leader by lot, which made for quite a spectacle. By chance, Micheál Martin and Simon Harris ended up stood right beside each other. Strategically, it would have made more sense to have Martin facing right and Harris facing left, back to back like the guys from Lethal Weapon, each attempting to bat away the concerns of four interlocutors each. Unfortunately, however, the interlocutors didn’t really make much of an impression.
Cian O’Callaghan, standing in for Soc Dem leader Holly Cairns, stood there looking a little bit haunted, as if he’d foreseen how everyone on stage was going to die. Richard Boyd Barrett, often a thunderous orator in Dáil Éireann and protest events, opted for a policy of strategic non-intervention. Joan Collins, the “leader” of “Right to Change”, is the only candidate even running under the banner of her “party”. Say what you will about the inclusion of Aontú – also a one-man band, in parliamentary terms – but at least it’s mathematically possible that come next weekend they will have more than one TD.
But in fairness to RTÉ, they were stuck for numbers. Having only nine leaders on stage would have just been silly.
There is nothing wrong with hosting a plurality of opinions by any means, but that’s not really what happened. The big three monopolised Monday night’s discussion while the other seven laid in wait for the opportunity to take their best shot. Over the course of two hours, none of them were able to find an opening of any great significance.
Boyd Barrett briefly held the government’s feet to the fire over Gaza. Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman did his best to separate his party and its ambitions from the government, given that they’ve just spent the last five years propping it up. Peadar Tóibín successfully made Harris squirm on the National Children’s Hospital. Specifically addressing the NCH, Harris for some reason thought it would be a good idea to say that the whole thing had actually first been signed off on before he was even born, which is sort of like if you crashed your car and tried to avoid responsibility by saying that you weren’t born when Henry Ford first launched the quadricycle.
In a debate that featured few standout moments, there was one bit of deeply contrived tension. Mary Lou McDonald had just finished making the point that despite Harris’ promises when Minister for Health, many children with scoliosis had been waiting so long for spinal surgery that their condition became inoperable.
“How dare you?” Harris demanded in response. “Who do you think you are? That you have some sort of monopoly on compassion?” Specifically, Harris was taking issue with McDonald’s accusation of “faux-concern for children”. A harsh criticism to level at anyone, no doubt, but one that will likely resonate with more people than not. Concern without concrete action may not be insincere, to be sure, but it’s not all that much use to anyone.
The cynical interpretation of Harris’ indignation would be that it was designed to distract from the point Mary Lou had just made, one which should absolutely be a source of profound shame for the Taoiseach and the government he leads. Ultimately, Mary Lou McDonald is in no way incorrect to say that Simon Harris broke his promise to those children. It’s a charge of profound gravity, and “How dare you?” is not an answer of substance.
It’s a handy phrase all the same, though. Works for everything. How dare you suggest the government hasn’t treated the housing crisis with the urgency it deserves? How dare you ask the former Minister for Health, who has since become Taoiseach, to take responsibility for a children’s hospital that has gone over budget by over 100% and still has no opening date? How dare you characterise the government as doing all it could to avoid taking in the €13 billion it was rightly owed by Apple, however correct you may be? How very dare you?
In that moment, Harris was speaking to the leader of the Opposition, but in terms of the issues that McDonald was raising, he might has well have been speaking to the roughly 75% of the country who will not be giving Fine Gael their first preference. One can imagine Fine Gael dropping their ‘A new energy slogan’ for the final week of campaigning and printing off some posters with Harris stood there pointing at the public like Lord Kitchener. “Fine Gael: How DARE you?”
But maybe this strategy of chiding anyone who dares – which is Harris’ word, remember, not mine – to challenge the government on its priorities or its intentions will be successful. Harris has also been employing it in his dealings with some members of the public while on the campaign trail.
This week, in footage captured by journalist Richard Chambers, Harris was seen in conversation with a woman who raised the issue of people in their 60s and 70s losing their homes to vulture funds. The woman, whose tone is polite throughout, makes the assertion that RTÉ don’t discuss this matter, at which point Harris cuts across to say: “I think there’s a microphone right beside you that says RTÉ on it”.
It was a pointless and childish interjection. Harris knows well that there’s a world of difference between a news organisation covering something to the public’s satisfaction and a news organisation accidentally picking up something on one of their mics because a member of the public had the temerity to ask the Taoiseach about it.
This past week has also been significant for the emergence of a brand new phrase that politicians are trialling in order to get out of tight corners such as these. Asked once again about his campaign launch alongside Michael O’Leary, during which the Ryanair boss insulted all 120,000 teachers in Ireland, Fine Gael minister Peter Burke described the scandal as a “media bubble” issue.
It was the very same phrase used by Peadar Tóibín to describe concerns over Aontú’s pledge to rewrite the abortion laws that 66% of the public voted on just six years ago. This too is apparently something that only concerns those of us in the media.
One suspects we’ll be hearing more of that phrase unless we pop it early, and it seems eminently worth pointing out that it’s hard to think of two issues that are less bubble-y. It’s a disingenuous phrase and it should be regarded on its face as little more than a PR strategy for weaselling out of something you don’t want to talk about. With six long days to go until the public goes to the polls, one suspects we will be hearing it again.
Still, it’s a little bit better than “How dare you?”
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