GAVAN REILLY: Others would have done well to match Peadar’s elbows

RTE’s big debate in Monday night with ten leaders (Tommy Bowe face: ten leaders?!?) was by necessity a slightly scattered affair. For the representatives of the smaller seven parties, it was the only chance to put their ideas to a flagship audience and to poke holes in the propositions of the big three.

The difficulty for any party in circumstances like this is to get a firm run on the microphone and to make points succinctly. Not many of the participants did; while Katie Hannon did a reasonable job of marshalling the discussion, she did let the ‘big three’ have what seemed like a disproportionate share of the airtime, which is probably why the debate ended up running 20 minutes beyond its allotted schedule.

There were only two winners among those other seven, who were able to get to the nub of their points quickly were Richard Boyd-Barrett in the second hour, and Peadar Tóibín in the first.

And in a marathon debate where participants’ attention is always going to start waning, making inroads in part 1 is definitely where you’d want to be.

For my money, objectively, the Aontú leader was the only one who was able to show a bit of elbow and muscle his way into the discussion dominated by the big three - and did it without appearing contrary or overtly adversarial. His cold analysis of coalition with FG or the Greens was quick and to the point; and his demeaning of FF (an ‘empty husk’ was a good soundbite.

And moreover, he did that without the first hour touching on the challenges of immigration - which is perhaps the one area in which Aontú has had an edge in the last few months.

If Aontu picks up its target seats in Dublin West and Wexford, or in Meath East, they’ll look back and say the Upfront studio was the place it was won.

Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent with Virgin Media News and Political Columnist with the Meath Chronicle. Column appears first in Tuesday's paper!