{"id":261397,"date":"2026-01-24T09:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T09:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/261397\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T09:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T09:59:08","slug":"trinity-hist-and-army-cadet-school-provide-winners-at-irish-times-debate-semi-final-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/261397\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinity Hist and Army Cadet School provide winners at Irish Times Debate semi-final \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A third group of finalists for the annual <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/\">Irish Times Debate <\/a>has been confirmed, with students from Trinity College and the Army Cadet School advancing from Friday night\u2019s semi-final.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Anya Wilson and Athena Wu of the TCD Historical Society progressed as the top team members, while Cadet Lehane of the Cadet School was the best individual speaker. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Irish Times Debate is now in its 66th year. The competition\u2019s third semi-final took place in the President\u2019s Hall at The Law Society of Ireland, Blackhall Place, with contestants debating the motion that \u201cthis house regrets the decline of formality in social and professional life\u201d. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Friday\u2019s debate featured 12 competitors, comprising four teams of two and four individual speakers. Ms Wilson and Ms Wu spoke in favour, as did a team of St\u00e9phane de Bair\u00e9id and Coleman Hegarty from University College Dublin\u2019s Literary &amp; Historical Society (UCD L&amp;H).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Individual speakers in favour were Cadet Lehane and Cormac McSparron of Queen\u2019s University Belfast\u2019s Literary Society.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Speaking against the motion were Molly McHugh and Darragh Gorman of the Solicitors\u2019 Apprentice Debating Society of Ireland (SADSI), and D\u00f3nal O\u2019Byrne and Niall Martin from the UCD L&amp;H. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Individual speakers in opposition were Caoimhe Molloy of SADSI and Keela Plunkett of UCD L&amp;H. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ciara McLoughlin, a team winner from 2024, is the convenor of The Irish Times Debate for 2025\/26. Irish Times journalist Nadine O\u2019Regan was the chairwoman for Friday\u2019s semi-final. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The adjudicators were: John O\u2019Donnell SC (presiding), a team winner in 1979; Aisling McCabe, group strategy and business development director at The Irish Times; Dearbhla O\u2019Gorman, a team winner in 2014 and tax director at PwC Ireland; and Conor White, a team winner in 2022 and associate at Arthur Cox.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The final will take place on Friday, February 27th in Dublin City University, and the chairwoman for that debate will be human rights lawyer Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A third group of finalists for the annual Irish Times Debate has been confirmed, with students from Trinity&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,15342],"class_list":{"0":"post-261397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-trinity-college-dublin-tcd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}