Hello and welcome to our live coverage of this rare afternoon presidential debate on RTÉ’s The Week in Politics. 

We’ll be bringing you all the key moments as they happen from 12pm. 

The debate will be moderated and hosted by Áine Lawlor. 

According to RTÉ, the first half will focus on the national role of the President while the second will deal with look at the international side of things.

And there will even be a question as Gaeilge, although – given only one of the candidates is fluent in the teanga – the Áras hopefuls will have the option of answering as Béarla. 

When we think of debates, it’s fair to say that most of us probably picture candidates standing at their respective podiums.

But not only will this be the second debate of the election, it will also be the second sit-down debate – with the three candidates sitting on the usual The Week in Politics sofa together, rather than the desk set-up we saw in the Tonight Show debate. 

The seating order was decided earlier this week. Jim Gavin will be nearest to Lawlor, with Catherine Connolly in the middle and Heather Humphreys to her right. 

TWIP Presidential debate Sunday October 5th at noon @RTEOne. Seating order for #Áras25 candidates as follows; pic.twitter.com/m37GNokBVH

— The Week in Politics (@rtetwip) October 2, 2025

And just in case that wasn’t clear…

For the avoidance of doubt… pic.twitter.com/xT6zkxb8kw

— The Week in Politics (@rtetwip) October 2, 2025

Catherine Connolly should be feeling confident ahead of the debate.

Today’s Sunday Independent/Ireland Thinks poll puts support for her campaign on 32% – nine points ahead of Heather Humphreys on 23% and over double that of the support for Fianna Fáil’s Jim Gavin, which is 15%. Some 31% said they are undecided. 

The Sunday Independent also reported that 44% of those polled said they believed Connolly came out on top during the Virgin Media debate last Monday, compared to just 6% for Humphreys and 5% for Gavin. Some 45% said they didn’t know who performed best. 

Today’s debate is one of five the national broadcaster has invited the candidates to take part in.

With just shy of three weeks until polling day, RTÉ has pitched three radio debates on various shows –  Drivetime, This Week, and Morning Ireland – and a final major head-to-head on Prime Time on 21 October.

There will also be one-to-one interviews with each of the candidates on RTÉ programmes. Virgin Media will have its own sit-down with each of the candidates on its series The Big Interview, followed by a special episode of the Tonight Show that will include analysis of the each of the candidates’ performances.

The candidates came face to face for the first time during Virgin Media’s first presidential debate on Monday.

In the days since, there have been a number of talking points cropping up that may feature today: Catherine Connolly’s hiring of a woman convicted of a gun crime, whom Connolly defended as “perfect for the job”.

Connolly said she “abhors violence” but said that the woman, Ursula Ní Shionnáin, had been a “model prisoner” and was looking to “get back into the workforce”. 

Heather Humphreys this week found herself insisting that she supported the introduction of legislation to impose stricter penalties on drink drivers, after former transport minister Shane Ross said she was “absolutely opposed” to it.

Humphreys voted for Ross’s bill, which passed in 2018, but he said she was one of a number of Cabinet ministers at the time who “made it clear” that she was opposed to it. 

Meanwhile, Jim Gavin had to take down and re-edit two social media posts over issues raised regarding the Defence Forces, as the Irish Defence Forces are meant to be an apolitical organisation. 

Earlier this week, Gavin was forced to explain how drone footage, which did not have the proper permission to fly and film, appeared in one of his videos.

The debate is set to begin in the next couple of minutes – you can watch live on RTÉ One or RTÉ Player, and you can follow along with us here. 

We’re just minutes away now.

If you want to make yourself a cuppa before thing’s kick off, this is your chance. 

And we’re off. 

The first question is Jim Gavin, who is asked why he should get people’s number one vote given he has less political experience than the other two candidates. 

He has that he has shown in his career to date that he has brought people together from diverse backgrounds. “The President of Ireland is the first citizen of Ireland, not the first politician,” he says, adding that he has served his country for the last four decades.

Catherine Connolly is asked if she was going to be a president for all since she is a candidate of the left. 

“I’m an independent candidate with an independent mind. As President, I will serve this country with dignity and with respect, and I will listen to the people of Ireland,” she says. 

She says we are at a crucial juncture in our history where we need a voice that has courage, and cites the fact that she was elected as the first female leas Ceann Comhairle with the backing of all sides of the Dáil. 

Given her performance in the last debate, which was viewed as somewhat lacklustre, Heather Humphreys is asked if her heart is really in the contest at all.

Humphreys says she wants to be president.

“When you apply for any job, people look at your experience, and I have the experience to do this job,” she says, adding that she was a minister for ten years and traveled the world “opening doors for Irish businesses” and standing up for people as social protection minister.

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The three candidates are asked if they would support reform of the process to elect a president – which sees a candidate requiring support of 20 Oireachtas members or four local councils. 

Humphreys says it’s a matter for government and indicates she’s happy with the process the way it is.

Connolly says she tends to be conservative on that issue, but that a democracy should be able for a full open debate on whether the nomination process needs to be reformed.

Gavin says he will give “the non-politician answer” and that having chaired citizens’ assemblies, he would be open to change.

The next item on the agenda is their respective positions on a unity referendum. 

Gavin says he isn’t sure that now is the time given “we’ve a lot of work to do with the North of Ireland”. 

He says the President has a vital role to be active in the North and says there is work to do “to get to know our neighbours across the border”.

Humphreys says she is an Ulster woman, like Mary McAleese, and says she did great work in terms of building bridges with Northern Ireland. She says there has to be urgency on uniting the country. 

Connolly says the referendum has to be done by consent with respect for all communities and all traditions. “Personally, of course, I’d love to see it in my tenure as president,” she says. 

She says she supports giving people in the North the right to vote, and says that no progress has been made on the issue due to what appears to be a lack of political will. 

Readers in the North have told The Journal that it’s wrong that they can’t vote in the election. 

Catherine Connolly is questioned about a woman she hired to work in Leinster House who was convicted of a gun crime. 

The story was first reported in The Journal this week. 

The presidential candidate sought to hire Ursula Ní Shionnáin as an administrative support when she was on the Oireachtas committee for the Irish language in 2018. At the time, she was a prominent member of the socialist republican group Éirigí.

Ní Shionnáin was sentenced to six years in jail in 2014 after being found guilty by the Special Criminal Court of unlawful possession of firearms and possession of ammunition. 

Connolly is asked if she was misled about her membership of the group. She says Éirigí is a registered political party and were not the only group not to support the Good Friday Agreement. She says that the woman served her prison sentence, got early release, started her PhD in prison and came out.

She says she didn’t know anything about Garda surveillance, but said that no rules were broken. 

She says she admires the person and says she was “one of the small success stories of the prison system” who was fully rehabilitated” and done her time. 

Áine now turns to Jim Gavin to ask him about a story reported in the Irish Independent yesterday, suggesting that he owes a former tenant of his €3,300 that the tenant paid in error at the time. 

Gavin said this matter was over 16 years ago and says it was a very stressful time for his family. “Like a lot of of families, we got into financial difficulty at that time, and on that particular issue, I don’t have all information to date,”he says. 

If it happened, I’m very sorry that it happened. I really am.  

When pressed on it, he repeats that it was 16 years ago and was a very stressful time for the family.

“I’m looking into it and I will deal with it with urgency,” he says. 

He is then questioned about having to take down and re-edit two social media posts over issues raised regarding the Defence Forces, as well as having to explain how drone footage, which did not have the proper permission to fly and film. 

He says he has got a very active campaign and that when the matters were brought to his attention, he acted. 

He is also asked about the Women of Honour, who have said it beggars belief that as an officer in the Air Corps, he was not aware that fellow female officers were being harassed and abused at the time.

He says around 50,000 people will have come through the Defence Forces during his 20 years there. He says he supports the Women of Honour and that had he heard or come across any information about harassment at the time, he would have done something. 

If I had known at any stage that these things were happening, people know me, I would have taken action.

Connolly takes this opportunity to point out that the first report about this, the Gleeson report, came out in 1990, while Tom Clonan’s report on the matter was published in 2000. 

“I’m not sure how he couldn’t have known with all of the reports that set out exactly what happened,” she says.

Humphreys is asked about disagreeing with President Michael D Higgins that housing is “our great failure”.

She says she has huge sympathy for people who can’t get a house and “we need to do more in terms of housing”.

She is also asked about her record on the Family and Care referendum,disability services and drink driving legislation - after former transport minister Shane Ross said she was “absolutely opposed” to it.

She says she did not oppose drink driving legislation and actually voted for it “twice”.

“I did not oppose it at Cabinet – and Cabinet is confidential – and that’s the bottom line here, and I’m not going to breach that confidentiality,” she says.

You should not be drinking and driving, and that is it. End of story.

The three candidates are asked as Gaeilge about no debate being held on TG4. 

Answering as Gaeilge, Connolly says Irish is the first language of Ireland and there should be a debate in the language. 

Humphreys said she would like to learn Irish and has committed to do so, but says she would feel at a disadvantage if she were to participate in a debate in Irish.

Gavin says he went to the Gaeltacht, but has lost his fluency and says the Constitution doesn’t state that the President must speak Irish. 

The debate now turns to international affairs, and the question of neutrality and the Triple Lock. 

Humphreys says decisions on referendums are decided by the government and that she supports Ireland’s neutrality. 

Connolly says Ireland is “in a unique position” given our history with the Troubles and the famine.

Now, more than ever, we need to reflect on where we’re going as a country, and our neutrality is our strongest defence.

Connolly is challenged on comments she has made about Germany, likening the country’s re-armament to the 1930s. She says there are parallels between the rise in militarism throughout the world as a method of bringing peace.

“It’s utterly contradictory,” she says. 

Humphreys chimes in to say Connolly has spoken out about Germany, France and the UK “but she has never spoken out against Russia”. 

Russia are the aggressors here, and what they’re doing in Ukraine is just terrible. It’s awful. We see people bombed in our beds. We see children bombed in their cots.

“And if it wasn’t for the German defence mechanisms, there would have been a lot more people killed in Ukraine in the last drone attack, and indeed, many more since,” she says. 

Connolly corrects Humphrey’s statement that she has never condemned Russia.

“That’s completely inaccurate. I have repeatedly condemned the invasion of Ukraine.” She also points to the “genocide unfolding in front of our eyes in Palestine” and says we “have to call out truth to power”. 

Gavin says Europe took no action after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. “Democratic states, we have to take action, because if we don’t, Poland and all the eastern border of Europe will be invaded.”

Both he and Humphreys say they would be in favour of deploying Irish peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.

Connolly says we should be building up the structures of the United Nations amid the ongoing conflicts.

“America has just used its veto to ensure we’ll have no peacekeeping forces in the Lebanon. That is absolutely unacceptable,” she says.

Asked if this is an argument for removing the Triple Lock, she says it’s the opposite. “What is needed is that we build up the UN with the general assembly and use the power that’s within the general assembly.”

The Occupied Territories Bill is raised, with Áine Lawlor asking Heather Humphreys about comments she made asking what difference the bill would make.

“Isn’t that an example of the government’s lack of commitment to a bill which you’ve been slow walking and don’t want to pass?” she asks. 

Humphreys says she supports the bill, which shows solidarity with the Palestinian people, “but what we need in Palestine and in Gaza is peace”.

Connolly is asked if she is worried about the US response if the bill is passed. 

We need to look at the cost of genocide to humanity, the cost of genocide to the Palestinian people.

“We need to have credibility in the world, and when we call out the abuse of power and the invasion by Russia of Ukraine, we must equally do that in relation to Israel, who are carrying out a genocide under our watch, under our eyes, armed and resourced by America.”

Jim Gavin says he was disappointed that Catherine Connolly had suggested tha remarks he had made on Israel’s legitimate military objectives, which he previously said “had been achieved”.

“What I actually said, was that it is unconscionable what is happening at the moment, it is unconscionable that we have a man-made famine in 2025, it is unconscionable that the bombing is still taking place,” he said.

He says Connolly took his quotes out of context. Áine Lawlor says Israel meeting its military targets “was the phrase used”. 

The final question is whether they would play a round of golf with US President Donald Trump. 

Humphreys says she would meet Trump because he is the US head of state with an elected mandate. She says she would talk to him about Ireland’s values and say the US is an important contributor to our country and how we can build better relationships. 

Connolly says she’s “not big into flattery”, but she has shown as leas Ceann Comhairle that she could meet Trump. She says she met with Joe Biden when he came here despite disagreeing with his views on Israel and Palestine. “I have no problem carrying out that part of my role.”

Gavin also says he would meet Trump. ”The people I wouldn’t meet would be those heads of state who have been indicted for war crimes,” he says, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

And that’s that! 

This debate was definitely a shorter and feistier outing than the first one. 

Our Political Editor Christina Finn will be bringing us some analysis of the debate along with a round-up of the biggest talking points. 

In the meantime, what did you think of the candidates? Who fared best and who crumbled under pressure? 

You can rate their individual performances here.

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My colleague Emma Hickey has more detail on the questions to put to Catherine Connolly about her hiring of  Ursula Ní Shionnáin as an administrative assistant to work in Leinster House, and the answers that she gave. 

Connolly said that Ní Shionnáin worked for her in Leinster House in 2019 for less than six months while the vetting process was underway and that she left of her volition after that period. 

Connolly said she herself signed Ní Shionnáin into Leinster House during that period and that clearance was never ultimately granted. 

Read more here.