The two Presidential candidates clashed over the cost-of-living, housing and migration in the latest election debate.<\/p>\n
Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys and Independent TD Catherine Connolly were on RT\u00c9’s Morning Ireland, for the latest debate in the campaign.<\/p>\n
Despite an explicit invitation from presenter Gavin Jennings that they could join in at any time, the two candidates chose to articulate their own positions rather than counter their opponent’s arguments.<\/p>\n
It was a notable difference from what took place on RT\u00c9’s The Week In Politics last Sunday, with Ms Humphreys interjecting regularly.<\/p>\n
The only real exchange came when Ms Connolly intervened to reject a charge by Ms Humphreys that she had supported Brexit.<\/p>\n
Ms Humphreys continues to be on the back foot when challenged on Fine Gael’s record in government, especially on the housing crisis and homelessness.<\/p>\n
In this debate, she asserted that she had taken the hard decision to go into government rather than choose the luxury of opting-out and sitting on the opposition benches.<\/p>\n
The counter-punch from Catherine Connolly was that being a member of the opposition isn’t easy at all.<\/p>\n
She also interesting spoke about how the movement behind her campaign could shape a different Republic in the next general election.<\/p>\n
Both candidates had sticky moments.<\/p>\n
Heather Humphreys on the issue of a public inquiry into the hit-and-run death of Shane O’Farrell, and Catherine Connolly on that fact-finding mission to Syria.<\/p>\n
Ms Humphreys said she had made representations to two justice ministers about the O’Farrell case and was sorry if Shane’s family didn’t believe she’d done enough – but didn’t quite explain why that was the case.<\/p>\n
Ms Connolly was trying to explain today’s Irish Times story that she had been photographed in Syria in the company of a militia leader linked to war crimes against Palestinian refugees.<\/p>\n
She said it isn’t possible to know on such a mission who is standing beside you – but that raises a question as to the value in going on such an assignment.<\/p>\n
There was a clear difference between the two candidates in how they answered questions about a possible visit to Ireland by Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Heather Humphreys said she would meet the US President as it was part and parcel of the job of being President.<\/p>\n
Catherine Connolly said she would meet him too, but added that Donal Trump was behind the genocide in Gaza, a reference probably to the US supplying weapons to Israel and shielding it diplomatically. These were very different approaches to the diplomatic tightrope of being Ireland’s 10th President.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two Presidential candidates clashed over the cost-of-living, housing and migration in the latest election debate. Fine Gael’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-86282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86282","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=86282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}