Fiery exchanges in the first televised leaders debate of Irish general election

Ireland’s political leaders have clashed on housing, public spending and the government’s response to war-ravaged Gaza in the first TV leaders’ debate of the election.

The RTE leaders’ debate, which was scheduled for two hours long but ran overtime, covered coalition options, housing, cost of living, climate, migration, and a bill to ban imports to Ireland from illegal Israeli settlements.

The debate opened up with possible future coalition options, with Ireland’s premier and deputy premier repeatedly making clear their opposition to entering government with Sinn Fein.

Standing together in the RTE studio, after a random draw placed them side by side, Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris and Tanaiste and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin were asked about their intentions if both secured a mandate to return to government.

After the debate, both leaders were quick to point out a random allocation had placed them beside one another with Mr Harris saying it was “interesting how it worked out”.

The two rounded on Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald on her party’s housing policy and State spending.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail served together for the first time in the last administration, a historic coalition that brought together two parties forged from opposing sides of Ireland’s civil war of the 1920s.

The Green Party served as a junior partner in the government.

Sinn Fein won the popular vote in 2020 but a failure to run enough candidates meant it did not secure sufficient seats in the Dail to give it a realistic chance of forming a government.

Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald is hoping to secure a breakthrough on polling day on November 29 that would see her party enter government south of the border.

As the debate involving 10 party leaders and deputy leaders began on Monday night, Mr Harris ruled out a coalition with Sinn Fein.

“If people vote for Sinn Fein to be in government, that’s their choice, but my party doesn’t wish to be a part of any such government,” he said.

Mr Martin, when asked the same question, said there were major policy differences between Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein.

“They’re not serious when it comes to pro-enterprise policies,” he said.

Ms McDonald insisted it was for the electorate to decide which party had a pathway to power.

“I think this election is potentially a historic one,” she said.

“Because for the very first time, there is the choice, the opportunity of a government led by neither Fine Gael nor Fianna Fail, but rather led by Sinn Fein.”

Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said his party had delivered in government and said they had spoken to Sinn Fein on policy priorities after the last general election but it “wasn’t clear to us that there was an alternative government available at that period”.

Labour leader Ivana Bacik said people were looking for “constructive change” and said she would speak to “like minded” centre-left parties, while Social Democrats’ deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan said they would speak to all parties after the election.

Aontu leader Peadar Toibin prompted protestations when he said: “I just think it’s incredible.

“We’re about 10 minutes in, and nobody’s been able to give a straight answer at this stage.”

He added that they would not go into government with Fine Gael, accusing them of having “incinerated people’s money through waste” or the Greens, due to “the damage that’s been done to rural Ireland in terms of the pressure put on farmers”.

He also called Fianna Fail an “empty hollow husk” and said that they would be “easier to direct” in the government.

Asked about the remarks after the debate, Mr Martin called them “arrogant and insulting”, adding: “Well, he won’t be directing anybody – I can tell you that now.”

Michael Collins said Independent Ireland would not whip its TDs on moral issues, but they would be on a programme for government, and they would not rule out any party.

People Before Profit’s Richard Boyd Barrett said that they wanted “to end 100 years of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael rule and see a left government for the first time in the history of this state”.

He said there should be a left alliance, to which Ms Bacik agreed, before Joan Collins of Right To Change said she would speak to all “left progressive groups” who are a “serious current”.

While Mr Harris and Mr Martin did not row with one another during the debate, disagreements broke out between Mr Martin and Mr O’Gorman on climate policies, and also between Ms Bacik against both Mr Boyd Barrett and Ms McDonald on the carbon tax.

Ms McDonald also said it was “astonishing to hear” Fine Gael and Fianna Fail suggest that the first-time buyers’ Help-to-Buy scheme was a “panacea” to the housing crisis when it was “an admission of failure and defeat”.

“Schemes like that and interventions like that should only ever be temporary,” she said.

Mr Boyd Barrett said that a failure on housing was because the state “has allowed people driven by profit to come to control the housing sector in this country – vulture funds, property investors, speculators”.

Mr Martin said “Fianna Fail has made a difference on housing” and said that a state construction company would “take years” to establish and accused it of being “more delay, more disruption”.

He added: “Richard, your proposals would destroy the construction industry,” to which Mr Boyd Barrett said Mr Martin’s party had “destroyed the economy and then (battered us with) austerity”.

Ms McDonald also criticised a Fine Gael proposal on a savings fund for infants not yet born when there are 4,500 children homeless and others on waiting lists for spinal surgery.

Mr Harris said “wow, how dare you” at the accusation of “faux” concern for children by Ms McDonald, after which she added, “nobody has a monopoly on compassion”.

“But here’s the thing, you and Micheal Martin have had a monopoly on power for a very long time, and yet here we are,” she said.

Mr Harris said later that the intervention was “mean-spirited”, adding: “I think that is beneath her.

“I think it’s particularly beneath her after what’s happened in her own party. There is nobody, I believe, in Dail Eireann who has anything other than compassion.”

He also said that while he did not sign the contract for the two billion euro National Children’s Hospital, which has suffered from repeated delays and inflated costs, he did accept responsibility for it during his time as health minister.

“There have been examples that have driven the people of this country nuts in relation to waste, including, and most particularly, the bike shed,” Mr Harris said, adding that it “never, ever ever” should have cost 336,000 euro to build a bike shed on parliamentary grounds.

On climate change, Mr O’Callaghan said that if every measure in the government’s action plan was implemented, “we still wouldn’t meet our emissions target reduction”.

He said: “The government are leading farmers down the garden path by saying, ‘Oh, we can keep this in place, and definitely that will not be the case”, to which Mr Harris interjected to say “of course we can keep it”.

Ms Bacik said it was “hard to take parties seriously on climate where they do not support a carbon tax”.

This prompted protestations from others including Mr Boyd Barrett, who said it would penalise working people, with Ms McDonald agreeing.

Mr Collins said he was “absolutely” serious about climate change and said that the retrofitting of homes was not being delivered fast enough.

Ms Collins said that people had been “demonised” over climate action and said there needed to be “social intervention into climate”.

When asked would they support pending legislation to ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, all party leaders said yes.

“You went to the White House, you bottled it,” Ms McDonald said during this part of the debate, to which Mr Harris asked her if wasn’t she at the White House as well, to which Ms McDonald said he was visiting as Taoiseach.

Mr O’Gorman also defended his record on housing arriving migrants, claiming he inherited a system for accommodating asylum seekers that “wasn’t fit for purpose”, while Mr Boyd Barrett insisted “migrants are not the problem”.

“There has been a systematic campaign of scapegoating them, which now Peadar (Toibin) and the Government are leaning into,” he said.

Asked about these comments as he was leaving RTE, Mr Toibin said that approach “seeks to censor proper debate and discussion”.

Mr O’Callaghan from the Social Democrats said Ireland had a “skill shortage”.

“So when I hear people talk about, you know, reducing the numbers of migrants, where are they going to pull these migrants out of, which hospitals are they going to close, which GP practices are going to close, which construction sites do they want to shut down?”

Ms McDonald said the issue that had caused division was not migrant labour, but the system used to process international protection applicants.

“The fact that this system is too slow, it’s not properly resourced, and the rules, all of them, have not been applied and been seen to apply, and also the introduction of very vulnerable cohorts of people into communities that are stretched beyond stretch. That’s unfair,” she said.

“It should never have happened, and it reflected not a planned approach, but the chaos within government on this.”

After the debate, several leaders made comments as they left RTE studios, with Mr O’Callaghan stating he believed the debate was not good for government parties, while Mr Harris and Mr Martin criticised Sinn Fein for not publishing their manifesto ahead of the televised debate.

The Sinn Fein manifesto is to be published on Tuesday morning.