Presidential Election 2025

Why would they ask for their money back if they agreed to the terms?

A serious organisation would have a no conflict of interest clause in any contract with contributers

Hmm do we know they dont?

Scoping Document be prepared on introducing a Register of
Interests https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/committee/dail/33/committee_of_public_accounts/submissions/2024/2024-01-09_correspondence-kevin-bakhurst-director-general-rte-r2148-pac33-item-6_en.pdf

2.10 What is the position regarding outside contractors / programme guests?
Contractors / programme guests are obviously not staff and therefore entitled to
conduct their own business and financial affairs outside of RTÉ.
The issue is to ensure appropriate visibility for RTÉ of any such business or other
activity which could reasonably be seen to impinge on the impartiality of a broadcast
or result in a benefit to a person or entity via their role with RTÉ.
The existing Employee Handbook makes no distinction between staff and
contractors. It states presenters should not be associated with commercial or other
interests such that the audience’s perception of their broadcasting role is or could be
adversely affected. This includes associating the individual with the promotion of any
product or service or allowing the fact that the individual uses a particular product or
service to be linked to its promotion

You were all over Yates and FG for the alleged smear, turns out, like every other anti FGer you were miles off the mark. She answerved the questions as you said, but it was not a smear to tell the truth of the situation and let voters make up their minds on it. She handled it well in fairness and it wouldnt be something I'd have pulled her on, no more than Yates doing his and still be able to give objective punditry. Should all journalists have to declare their voting intentions so that we can see how their views might be skewed by that?

No, but i did think they had the right to question it and her on it.

I'm not arguing that FGs campaign wasn't a disaster, it was, Humphreys was a disaster herself and looked and sounded like a tired politician with no vision. I was surprised by her lack of charisma. Looking back, she should have stayed retired. She was a,poor candidate, Gavin was very poor even without the rent issue.

FF and FG both ran very very poor campaigns, they need shaking up and leadership changes big time.

From day 1 Connolly ate them both up in the charisma and pr dept, she sounded the most sincere and believable, you'll get no argument from me on that. I still wouldnt have voted for her under any circumstances because I totally disagree with her policies on nearly every subject, both foreign and national.

What was the smear? What wasn't the truth?

Questions about factual things aren't a smear!

You're missing the key point here:

Ivan Yates gave media coaching to Taoiseach Micheál Martin in the run-up to the last General Election

If he coached MM during the election period, while also on Newstalk/RTÉ pretending to be a neutral commentator, this could be a bigger problem for the broadcasters than we thought.

Think it's safe to say we won't hear Ivan on the airwaves again. He might launch his own podcast or whatever but he sounds like he needs someone to do the legwork for him.

Didn't mention it. This may cause problems for all commentators who provide services to politicians and parties. There may be some panelistas who might not be on panels in the future.

The hand gestures are interesting. Using the thumb rather than the index figure to emphasise a point dates back to Bill Clinton who used it very effectively. There was something false about the way that Gavin was using those gestures. He is not a good media performer because he hasn't had much experience. Connolly was good because she worked as a barrister and was in an adversarial system.

If you watch Martin's body language on a TV interview where he is under pressure, the first move is often the "fake boobs" move of palms upward. That's a "please believe me" gesture. Then, when he gets under pressure and can barely control his anger, he starts clawing. It is a very strong tell. His media coaches have probably been trying to stop him doing it for years. If you watch some of his interviews on RTE they actually try to keep his hands out of the shot.

Who benefits? Who does it weaken? Who does it strenghten? Above all, remeber that it is the Indo and they have done well in this election and managed to get a scoop on Gavin that potentially changed the outcome of the election. It looks like Martin is in their sights now and there is that review that is due to be published.

So it's a media scandal, if it is a scandal, not a political one at all. Yet the "smear" artists try to turn it into FF/FG fault.

Every pp uses pr companies.

I think in general FG's strategy needs to get itself out of the US-style or UK style negative campaign approach. The Irish public does not respond well to that, and particularly not around an election like this.

What I think people wanted to see was a presentation of the ambition, the positivity and the hope for what the office can do - not a whole load of sniping and snarking about public policy issues that aren't even in the scope of the presidency.

It's a drastically different type of election to a run for the Dáil and I think TDs and ex TDs don't quite get that sometimes and there's always a tendency by the commentary and the online noise to misinterpret the whole thing as a US-style election, which it absolutely isn't as the role is totally different.

In my view of it anyway, a successful candidate needs to be able to come in with a big vision for the presidency, present that in a strong way, completely ignore the waffle on the edges and basically start behaving presidentially from the outset or at least from the debates onwards. You saw that with both Robinson and McAleese very early on years ago - they were just immediately identifiable as presidential - in an irish context of what that means.

I really find FG's strategies are all over the place though, not just in this election, but generally - they're probably just in too long and stale, but as the saying goes : you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar - and right now FG's strategies are VERY heavy on the vinegar.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil's candidate selection just tried the parachuting in a sports candidate - not sure how that was ever supposed to work tbh.