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Ellen Coyne and Naomi O’Leary join Pat Leahy to look back on the week in politics:
· In the wake of Catherine Connolly’s emphatic presidential election win, could there now be a legitimate prospect of a left-wing government arising from the next general election?
· With anger still simmering in Fianna Fáil’s ranks after a disastrous presidential campaign, is party leader Micheál Martin looking at a leadership challenge down the line? Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1 this week, the Taoiseach criticised “unacceptable” and “hurtful” comments about him from Fianna Fáil rebels like fellow Cork TD James O’Connor.
· The coalition partners are becoming more openly critical of immigration. Perhaps they are now following the example of other European countries?
· And Naomi O’Leary discusses the Dutch political scene with reports suggesting the centrist D66 party caused a big upset in Dutch elections this week.
Plus, the panel picks their favourite Irish Times pieces of the week:
· Mary ‘Mae’ McGee who successfully fought the ban on contraception in Ireland, and Newton Emerson on how Fine Gael’s anti-British rhetoric came back to bite Heather Humphreys.
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This week’s Inside Politics podcast with Hugh Linehan explores what a united Ireland would actually involve, Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole and Belfast Telegraph journalist Sam McBride have written a new book that addresses the case both for and against Irish unity.
The structure of the book is unusual. Each journalist writes two long chapters: one arguing for unity, and one arguing against. O’Toole says the aim is to “give people a sense of what a decent argument looks like”. Too often, he suggests, the subject becomes a referendum about identity rather than a discussion of consequences. McBride agrees, saying most people “don’t get beyond the binary of are you for or against it” even though “none of us know what it would mean”.
Practical questions run through the book: healthcare integration, welfare harmonisation, education, taxation and policing. McBride stresses the range of possible constitutional models. Northern Ireland could remain semi-autonomous within a united Ireland; or the island could adopt a more federal structure. “We don’t even know the most basic elements of this,” he says.
Their conclusion is that everyone on the island will soon need to make an informed choice. And that requires informed understanding, not simplistic assumptions.
For and Against a United Ireland is published by the Royal Irish Academy.
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Pat Leahy joins Hugh Linehan for the final episode of Election Daily for this campaign. They look at the impact of Connolly's victory on left-wing politics, wonder if Ireland is about to have a more outspoken president than ever before and consider Simon Harris and Micheál Martin's political futures.
Thanks to everyone who listened to Election Daily. Inside Politics will return on Wednesday.
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Votes are still being counted but it is already clear that Catherine Connolly has won the presidency by a huge margin.
Connolly's victory will be confirmed at Dublin Castle this afternoon. Hugh, Jack Horgan-Jones and Ellen Coyne are there and sat down to discuss the emerging results and what they mean. How did Catherine Connolly get her campaign so right and Fine Gael theirs so wrong? What does the unprecedented level of spoiled votes really signify? And how will the government parties interpret and respond to this loss?
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Cormac McQuinn and Jack Horgan Jones join Hugh Linehan to talk about the final day of campaigning before voters go to the polls.
They look at how the Connolly campaign has managed to create momentum that sustained her push for the Áras since July and why the Humphreys campaign did not live up to expectations.
Finally they pick their high and low points of the campaign.
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The two remaining candidates in the presidential election came into the final televised debate of the campaign needing different things.
Well behind in the polls, Heather Humphreys needed to come across convincingly while landing some blows. Catherine Connolly needed not to slip up. So how did they do?
On today’s episode of The Irish Times Election Daily podcast Ellen Coyne, Pat Leahy and Hugh Linehan analyse how the battle-weary candidates handled questions from hosts Miriam O’Callaghan and Sarah McInerney and whether the programme will have moved the dial for voters ahead of polling, now just two days away.
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Harry McGee and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh to talk about today's news from the presidential campaign trail:
A concert in support of Catherine Connolly's campaign brought top musical artists and thousands of young people together in Dublin's Vicar Street on Monday night. The event also brought together Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald, the Social Democrats’ Holly Cairns, Paul Murphy of People Before Profit-Solidarity and Labour’s Ivana Bacik, who were photographed hand-in-hand on stage. Could the left's new-found unity be an image of the political future?
The panel also look at the ongoing fallout from 'the video' and ahead to tonight's RTÉ debate.
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Ellen Coyne and Pat Leahy join Hugh to talk about the all the latest from the presidential election campaign.
There is one topic dominating the campaign today, or two related topics: Catherine Connolly's record as a barrister who worked on behalf of financial institutions in the aftermath of the property crash, and Fine Gael's negative campaigning around that record. A video posted by Fine Gael to social media and an interview Humphreys gave to a Sunday newspaper drew attention to the issue but also drew a huge negative reaction, from Connolly supporters but also from those who believe Connolly should be above such criticism due to how barristers are assigned cases.
Ellen assesses Fine Gael's tactics. Who is their video really aimed at: voters or journalists? Meanwhile Pat has been speaking to members of the Bar to find out whether Connolly has any case to answer.
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With Catherine Connolly showing an unprecedented lead for a presidential candidate one week out from polling day, could her campaign only be derailed by something extraordinary at this stage?
Cormac McQuinn and Harry McGee join Hugh Linehan to discuss Connolly’s seemingly unassailable lead, the repetitive nature of recent debates, and with posters for Connolly and even Jim Gavin outnumbering Humphreys in some Dublin Fine Gael strongholds, could the party be accused of adopting a low energy approach to this campaign?
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Catherine Connolly holds a commanding lead in the presidential election with just over a week to go before votes are cast, according to the latest Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll.
The poll finds that Connolly, on 38 per cent, has almost double the support of her nearest rival, Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, on 20 per cent. Support for the Fianna Fáil candidate, Jim Gavin, who stopped his presidential campaign last week, but is still on the ballot paper, is at just 5 per cent.
Pat Leahy joins Hugh Linehan to talk about the significance of Connolly's lead, the mountain Humphreys now has to climb to win and what her campaign may do in the final week of the race.
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As independent candidate Catherine Connolly and Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys enter the final nine days of the campaign, Jack Horgan Jones and Ellen Coyne join Hugh Linehan to launch our daily podcast coverage.
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Hugh talks to Ronan McCrea, professor of constitutional and European law at University College London, about his new book, The End of the Gay Rights Revolution. McCrea believes that the achievements of the most successful civil rights movement of the last few decades may be more politically fragile than most people assume. He argues that these successes were largely an incidental dividend of the wider sexual revolution rather than a standalone victory. What law and culture give quickly, he says, they can also take away.
The book traces the shift from decriminalisation to equality, the AIDS-era turn to pragmatism, and the post-marriage-equality problem of purpose. McCrea contends that movement overreach, mission creep to ever-broader agendas, and a reluctance to confront awkward truths leaves freedoms exposed to changing demographics, populism and a revived moral conservatism. The conversation asks what a strategy of consolidation rather than perpetual expansion would actually look like and whether it carries costs as well as benefits in a world where history rarely moves in straight lines.
The End of The Gay Rights Revolution is published by Polity.
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Ellen Coyne and Harry McGee join Hugh Linehan to look back on the week in politics:
· With Jim Gavin gone, the presidential election is now a two-horse race between Catherine Connolly and Heather Humphreys, and a more combative one at that as the third live debate on Thursday on RTÉ Radio’s Drivetime will attest. Is Heather Humphreys trying to appeal to voters on the left who haven’t made their mind up about Connolly yet?
· As the timetable of who knew what and when becomes apparent in the Jim Gavin controversy, could those running his campaign have done anything to dampen the impact of the revelation around an unpaid debt to a former tenant from Gavin’s time as a landlord in 2009? And why did Gavin go ahead and participate in RTÉ’s televised debate last Sunday when the game was already effectively up?
· And will Wednesday’s marathon Fianna Fáil party meeting provide enough catharsis for a cohort within the party questioning Micheál Martin’s leadership in the wake of the Jim Gavin fiasco?
Plus, the panel picks their favourite Irish Times pieces of the week:
· Manchán Magan remembered, Japan’s Iron Lady, and Ray D’Arcy leaves RTÉ.
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Yesterday’s budget spelled out the Government’s tax and spending plans for next year. But what happens after that?
Barra Roantee of Trinity College Dublin’s Department of Economics says it is “shocking” that there is no plan beyond 2026.
“Last year we had five-year-ahead forecasting. The year before was four-year. We’re meant to be submitting a medium term plan to the European Commission.
This is part of our obligations, and we were told that was going to happen over the summer. Then, it’ll happen near the budget. It still hasn’t happened, and we still have no detail. We don’t know what spending is meant to be in 2027, 2028”.
He also highlights the lack of detailed costings to underpin our budgetary decisions.
“In the UK they’ll have hundreds of pages of costing documents for each policy decision and we have nothing. We have, like, a page”.
Roantree is also highly critical of the way Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers have conveyed their decisions, including “astronomical spending increases” that end up being far higher, he says, than is claimed on Budget Day.
“These costings are a cynical wheeze, innumerate, and they’re being used to, I think at this stage, cook the books”.
On today’s podcast Rowntree talks to Hugh Linehan and Pat Leahy about Budget 2026.
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Ellen Coyne and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh to talk about the stunning news of Jim Gavin's withdrawal from the presidential race, leaving Heather Humphreys and Catherine Connolly in a head-to-head battle.
The news has infuriated Fianna Fáil backbenchers and leaves party leader Micheál Martin and campaign director Jack Chambers with big questions to answer over how Gavin was selected and how his campaign was run.
There is also the question of which of the remaining candidates benefits most from Gavin's withdrawal.
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Pat Leahy and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh Linehan to talk about the week in politics:
We already know next Tuesday’s budget is going to be a much less generous affair than recent years. Jack and Pat share what they know about the tough stance being taken by Ministers Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers in negotiations, including one Government source’s characterisation of Chambers as akin to Margaret Thatcher: “no, no, no”.
Of the three presidential hopefuls, Catherine Connolly has run the strongest campaign so far. But could the news that she employed a woman convicted of firearms offences hinder her in gathering the votes she needs?
Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin’s campaign also made some missteps this week, hampering the novice politician’s campaign as it finds its feet.
Security issues are at the top of the European agenda thanks to the ongoing war in Ukraine and the fear of Russian cyberattacks and drone incursions.
Finally the panelists pick their favourite Irish Times journalism of the week including Senator Michael McDowell’s explanation for why he didn’t nominate Maria Steen, the passing of Martin Mansergh and a relatable personal problem.
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Fresh from the hostile grass arena of Bethpage, where supporters of the US Ryder Cup team spent the weekend abusing their European opponents, Washington correspondent Keith Duggan returns to the podcast to discuss the latest:
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Hugh interviews Albanian academic and author Lea Ypi about her new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined. The book is an exploration of political, historical and philosophical themes through the story of Ypi's grandmother, Leman Ypi, who experienced Albania’s tumultuous 20th century, from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, through fascism, Nazism, communism and its fall.
Lea talks about how literature helps us hear silenced histories - particularly those of women. She also discusses nation formation, the role of archives, and the analogies between historical and current political crises.
Lea Ypi is Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Indignity: A Life Reimagined is published by Penguin.
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