{"id":321064,"date":"2026-02-28T02:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T02:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/321064\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T02:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T02:21:08","slug":"tcd-hist-and-sadsi-students-triumph-in-irish-times-debate-final-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/321064\/","title":{"rendered":"TCD Hist and SADSI students triumph in Irish Times Debate final \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anya Wilson and Athena Wu of Trinity College Dublin<\/a>\u2019s Historical Society (Hist) have been crowned team winners of the 66th Irish Times Debate<\/a> final, Ireland\u2019s longest-running third-level debating competition.<\/p>\n

The individual speaker\u2019s award went to Cian Carew of the Solicitor\u2019s Apprentices Debating Society (SADSI). <\/p>\n

The runner-up team was UCC Law Society\u2019s Tara Kennedy and Joyce O\u2019Sullivan and the runner-up individual was Christina Mohan of King\u2019s Inns. <\/p>\n

The motion for this year\u2019s final was \u201cThis house believes the United Nations<\/a> has had its day\u201d. <\/p>\n

Speakers were competing for the Demosthenes Trophy for best team, and the Christina Murphy Memorial Trophy for best individual, as well as places on an all-expenses-paid tour of the United States for the three winning speakers.<\/p>\n

\"CianCian Carew of SADSI at the Irish Times Debate final. Photograph: Alan Betson<\/p>\n

A dozen speakers took part in the final at Dublin City University on Friday evening, the culmination of a competition that began last autumn. Some 140 teams of 280 third-level contestants took part. <\/p>\n

Human rights barrister Caoilfhionn Gallagher<\/a>, who won the team award representing UCD in 1999, was the debate chairperson.<\/p>\n

She praised the standard of the debate and pointed out that the Irish have more special rapporteurs working for the United Nations \u2013 not just per head of population, but overall. <\/p>\n

Among those present in the audience was the barrister and historian Charles Lysaght, who won the first competition in 1960. He described it as the \u201chighlight of my life\u201d. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Trinity Hist and Army Cadet School provide winners at Irish Times Debate semi-finalOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Announcing the result, Irish Times editor Ruadh\u00e1n Mac Cormaic said we are living in an age in which \u201cwe fret constantly about an incipient crisis of literacy. There\u2019s a kind of moral panic about young people\u2019s attention spans or the dumbing-down of the culture\u201d. <\/p>\n

However, he said the quality of debate in the final was \u201cas high if not higher than it has ever been in the competition\u2019s long history\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cNobody could leave this hall tonight with anything other than a sense of hope and optimism about the generation of students you represent.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anya Wilson and Athena Wu of Trinity College Dublin\u2019s Historical Society (Hist) have been crowned team winners of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[149325,61,60,43,149326,149324,15342],"class_list":{"0":"post-321064","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-caoilfhionn-gallagher","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-ruadhan-mac-cormaic","13":"tag-the-irish-times-debate","14":"tag-trinity-college-dublin-tcd"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321064","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=321064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}