Tuesday, February 16, 2016

A video from behind the scenes of the leaders' debate in the University of Limerick last night has been released.

RTÉ broadcasted the debate from the university's Concert Hall, the first ever General Election TV debate to be held outside of Donnybrook by the broadcaster.

The Claire Byrne Live Leaders debate featured seven party leaders from across the Dáil, including the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Joan Burton as well as five from the opposition benches.

The general consensus after the debate was that the smaller parties, the Social Democrats and Anti Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit, performed the best at last night's debate.



The facts behind the second #GE16 leaders debate ... in data

Data journalist, Robbie Byrne got to work for us crunching the data from last night's #GE16 election debate.

WHO SPOKE THE MOST

Data from last night’s leaders debate shows that Enda Kenny came out on top for actual minutes spoken.

WHO SPOKE WHEN

Here the time spoken by each leader is broken down chronologically.

WHO MENTIONED WHO

Unsurprisngly Enda Kenny received the most mentions with Micheál Martin leading the attacks, mentioning Enda Kenny 13 times. (The thickness of the line indicates the volume of mentions.)

THE BUZZWORD BINGO CHART

Finally to some of those buzzwords.

Unsurprisingly, Enda Kenny mentioned the word ‘recovery’ the most. Bucking the trend of previous debates, Irish Water failed to garner a single mention while the much-abhorred term ‘fiscal space’ was treated to a single mention ... by Richard Boyd Barrett.

Gerry Adams was the only leader to mention 1916, referring to the anniversary on four occasions. ‘Can I just say’ was, unsurprisingly, mentioned eight times by Joan Burton.

Comments are closed.

Contact Newsdesk: 053 9259900

More National News

The first early turnout figures are in

More by this Journalist

The first early turnout figures are in