‘You should think more about Crumlin and not the Kremlin’: Five takeaways from RTÉ’s European election Dublin debate

1. It was the best of the three televised debates

There wasn’t too much to compare it to. The Midlands North West debate was chaotic because of some of the personalities involved. The Ireland South debate was grand, but it did not produce fireworks. This one did. All eight candidates in the Dublin debate were extremely well briefed, were armed with immediate data and quotable quotes, and did not hold back.

Miriam O’Callaghan and Sarah McInerney are well able to ask steely questions, but they were outdone by the spiky interjections from the candidates. If it were a hurling game you would say there was plenty of timber. But it never descended into a messy shemozzle. Among several fiery contributors, the normally laid-back Barry Andrews of Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan were the most assertive.

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2. ‘You Should Think More about Crumlin and not the Kremlin’

The best line from the whole campaign. Sure, it was one that was prepared earlier but it was still a beaut, especially the way that Barry Andrews delivered it and directed it at Clare Daly.

Daly was always going to be on a sticky wicket about Ukraine and the ongoing perception that she and Mick Wallace were among only 13 MEPs who did not condemn the invasion by Russia. “I roundly condemned it,” she insisted. Asked why she opposed sanctions against Russia then, she began arguing that sanctions “only hurt the people of Europe”.

It was then that Andrews jumped in. “Clare has consistently underestimated the threat posed to the EU by Putin. You voted against a resolution that condemned the military build-up.”

She countered that that was untrue but Andrews continued.

“Your problem is that you do not listen to the people of Dublin. You should think more about Crumlin and not the Kremlin … in Iran, Syria, Belarus you are defending Russia’s interests and it really is a disgrace.”

Daly gamely tried to defend her record but the blow had been struck.

Of everything that was said in the debate, this is the only one that will be remembered.

The exchange took place during the section of debate on defence, which mostly focused on the triple lock.

3. Migration: the dog that did not bark

The first thing that must be said about most of the candidates is that they hold some views that diverge from those of their parties. That was true of the debate on migration that turned out to be, oddly enough, the most nuanced of the night.

True, there were big differences in views among the candidates. But there were no candidates among the eight who were taking a tough stance against migration, perhaps the biggest single issue in this election cycle.

So, in a sense, we got to hear only the spectrum of opinion on one side of the argument, albeit the more humane side.

Regina Doherty of Fine Gael, Ciaran Cuffe of the Greens and Barry Andrews of Fianna Fáil all belong to parties who support the Asylum and Migration Pact. But two – Cuffe and Andrews – admitted they had difficulties with some aspects of it. Their arguments were that it is imperfect but it is agreed across the EU and it is unlikely a better pact could emerge from the next parliament, which will be more right wing.

Doherty was the most unruffled of all the candidates throughout the debate and easily dealt with the probing questions around asylum seekers being kept in detention centres, a charge also put by other candidates.

“There is never any risk of detention centres [in Ireland],” she replied. “We will provide sustainable State accommodation. Nobody will lose their liberty. Nobody will be detained … they can only be detained if they break the law.”

Sarah McInerney put it to Lynn Boylan that half of the 5,000 people who claimed asylum here in the first three months of the year came from another EU country. How would Sinn Féin return them if not in the pact, she asked.

Boylan gave a reply to a different question. McInerney asked again. Boylan gave a reply to another different question. McInerney asked the same question for a third time. Boylan did eventually answer that there was nothing to stop Ireland doing it now.

It prompted an over-and-back between her and Andrews, with Aodhan Ó Ríordáin butting in.

The Labour candidate was solid throughout the debate and never looked uncomfortable under pressure. When it was put to him that his party’s grouping in Europe supported the pact, Ó Ríordáin argued he was against it as it would result in the “stripping away of many of the rights” and lead to a replica of the Rwanda situation in Britain.

In fairness to Sinéad Gibney of the Social Democrats and Bríd Smith of People Before Profit, both articulated their unreconstructed view that there was no problem with the numbers of asylum seekers coming in at the moment. The paradox is that in the context of the way the debate has gone in recent months, that view can sound almost shocking when articulated. Their comments are the complete antithesis to the ‘Ireland is full’ trope.

Asked by Miriam O’Callaghan if she would place no restrictions at all on numbers coming in, Gibney said no, and added the debate should not be even framed in that manner. She said the State had an obligation to assess if people had a right to protection and that 30,000 in the context of a population of over five million was small.

She won the dictionary corner prize for using the phrase “cynical performative cruelty” to describe the political motives behind checks at the border and boarding aircraft to ask for documents.

Bríd Smith phrased it differently, saying Ireland, with its own population ageing, should encourage migration from poorer countries. She too would place no restrictions on the number of migrants coming in.

4. Yes, it was Dublin and not rural Ireland

The climate change debate was very different from what we heard in the other two debates. Nobody among the Dublin candidates demurred from the need to cull cattle, to take cars out of the city centre if necessary, to end the nitrate derogation and even to rewet Irish bogs.

It was here that Cuffe was strongest, as you would expect. The mild-mannered Green MEP toughened his prose to tackle Regina Doherty who had compared bicycle lanes to the Berlin Wall.

“Frankly with Regina Doherty, it was something you might hear at the far end of a pub at closing time,” he said, adding it was something one might hear 30 years ago.

Doherty responded by burnishing her and Fine Gael’s green credentials before accusing the Greens of being autocratic and not bringing people along.

Cuffe responded by reminding her that a few years ago she had said she would not let her children cycle into town because of the lack of cycle lanes.

Elsewhere, there was little contention. Boylan is strong on climate change and it’s no surprise her views are different from party colleagues in Sinn Féin. Sinéad Gibney said farmers needed to be supported but also said herd replacement was needed. Asked would he be in favour of taking cars out of the city. Ó Ríordáin said he was in favour of any change that would be sustainable.

5. The personal questions can never be fair

The last section of these debates can be tricky as it’s hard to find a question that will be equally tough on all candidates. The questions asked of a few of the candidates were soft. Bríd Smith was asked about Clare Daly refusing to enter an electoral pact with People Before Profit (PBP). That was easy to answer. Her concern was PBP. “We are building a party made of people power,” she said.

Equally Aodhán Ó Ríordáin was asked if he loved Dublin so much why he wanted to go to Europe. That was also easy peasy. Barry Andrews (housing), Regina Doherty (Ursula von der Leyen), Lynn Boylan (Sinn Féin flip-flops) and Ciarán Cuffe (Green tide on the way out) had moderately more challenging questions.

Sinéad Gibney was asked a scorchingly difficult one, about the views of several political commentators that Rory Hearne would have been the strongest candidate for the Soc Dems in Dublin.

Ouch, that was personal. She defended herself by saying she was the right candidate and brought a freshness, strong leadership and experience to the ticket. The comments were “punching down” on the Soc Dems and were “just nasty”, she added.

Equally, Clare Daly was asked a very tough question about her communications with Omagh bomb suspect Liam Campbell. Her reply had clearly been well thought out beforehand. She said she had always engaged with political prisoners as part of a cross-party Oireachtas group and while one could not undo the horrors of what had occurred there could be engagement with people to bring them away from paramilitarism.