Questions and Answers
Questions and Answers is a topical
debate television programme in the
Republic of Ireland. It is currently shown on
RTÉ One at 22:35 on Mondays, running for approximately one hour. The show is presented by
Dr. John Bowman.
The programme, which was launched in the late
1980s, follows an almost identical format to the BBC's long-running
Question Time programme. Each week the chairperson initiates a discussion between several prominent politicans and commentators. The discussion is led by questions asked by members of the audience. The first question will usually deal with the major political issue of the week. The final question is often a trivial or comic question.
Unlike
Question Time, which is broadcast each week from a different location and only occasionally is broadcast from
BBC Television Centre,
Questions and Answers is usually broadcast from the
RTÉ television complex in
Donnybrook,
Dublin with only occasional broadcasts from around Ireland.
For its first decade the programme was taped for broadcast from approximately 7pm on the night of transmission. Since the late 1990s however the programme has been broadcast live, with phoned in or emailed in comments from viewers read out.
The Lenihan Tape Affair (1990)
For more information on this political scandal, see Patrick_Hillery, Former President of IrelandThe programme has occasionally set the national news agenda. During a broadcast in
1990 the then
Tánaiste and expected next
President of Ireland,
Brian Lenihan, destroyed his chances of election. He denied involvement in an effort eight years earlier in January 1982 to pressurise the then President to refuse a parliamentary dissolution - contradicting previous statement he had made.
Lenihan had actually confirmed his involvement in the effort some months earlier in an
on-the-record interview with a journalist
Jim Duffy, as he had to numerous political colleagues privately over eight years. During the presidential election campaign he changed his story, first in an
Irish Press interview, and then on
Questions and Answers. Some journalists had been told by Lenihan previously of his role in pressurising Hillery, but had been told it in an 'off the record' conversation and so could not reveal it (though one did hint it in an unsigned editorial in the
Irish Independent during the crisis following the programme).
However following the programme, Duffy, in a backlash to pressure from Lenihan's
Fianna Fáil not to reveal the information, did reveal that Lenihan's account on the programme conflicted with his pre-campaign version. The minor party in
Charles Haughey's government, the
Progressive Democrats, threatened to quit government and cause a
general election unless either Lenihan was sacked from cabinet or an inquiry was ordered into the events of January 1982. When Lenihan refused to resign, Haughey, instead of ordering an inquiry into who had made the calls in 1982, sacked him.
Pat Doherty on the murder of Garda McCabe
Sinn Féin's
Pat Doherty also used the show in
1996 to deny the involvement of the
Provisional IRA in the murder of
Garda Jerry McCabe. Members of that group were later convicted of the murder of McCabe, and Sinn Féin have campaigned for their early release on that basis.
Mitchel McLaughlin and Michael McDowell
In
2005 Sinn Féin chairman
Mitchell McLaughlin told viewers that though it had been wrong for the
IRA to kill
Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten young children kidnapped, shot and secretly buried, the action was not a "crime". In the aftermath of his comments, he was subjected to extreme criticism within from the
Irish government, from all the main parties in
Dáil Éireann, the media and by the public on radio shows.
Labour Party leader
Pat Rabbitte, in a press release immediately afterwards commented that "Any civilised society must consider the abduction and murder of a mother of 10 children to be a crime of considerable barbarism" while Mrs McConville's son Michael said that McLaughlin, along with Sinn Féin
TD Arthur Morgan, who had made similar comments elsewhere, "should be holding their heads in shame".[
1]
The
Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell, who had put the question to McLaughlin, went on to say that he considered
Bobby Sands, one of the
1981 hunger strikers, a criminal, but refused to state on whether he considered IRA actions in the
Anglo-Irish War to have been similarly criminal.
McLaughlin went on to lose his battle to win the parliamentary seat of
Foyle in the
2005 British general election even though he had been widely tipped to win. Opponents suggested that his comments on
Questions and Answers had dented his electoral appeal.
The tough line taken by the presenter, guests and the audience on
Sinn Féin panellists has become a major feature of the programme in recent months. It mirrors a wider shift in public and media attitudes towards Sinn Féin since the murder of
Robert McCartney by IRA members in early 2005.
*
Olivia O'Leary*
John Bowman
