"The only person I want to elect here is Claire Byrne."
As the general election nears its conclusion on February 8th, last night saw 'Claire Byrne Live' host a debate with the leaders of the major political parties of Ireland.
Micheál Martin from Fianna Fáil, Leo Varadkar from Fine Gael, Mary Lou McDonald from Sinn Féin, Eamonn Ryan from the Green Party, Roisin Shorthall from Social Democrats, Richard Boyd-Barrett from Solidarity-People Before Profit, and Brendan Howlin from Labour were all on stage, battling it out like an episode of 'Fifteen To One'.
As you'd expect, the parties all fought their corner as best they could, but Twitter was where much of the deciding went down, not to mention people making good jokes along the way. By all accounts, the real winner on the night was Claire Byrne for moderating the event and doing her best to keep the bullshit in check.
Here's some of the best tweets from the show.
10.
“Knock knock”
Who’s there?
“Interrupting Party Leader”
Interrup-
“IF I COULD JUST FINISH MY POINT PLEASE” #cblive— Michael Fry (@BigDirtyFry) January 27, 2020
9.
Brendan Howlin just happy to get a night out.#cblive #Leadersdebate pic.twitter.com/0WPWWNDO7K
— Caolán Mc Aree (@Caolanmcaree) January 27, 2020
8.
WWN is boycotting tonight’s debate as we believe there are only two real parties and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael aren’t either of them and shouldn’t be included. #cblive
— WWN (@WhispersNewsLTD) January 27, 2020
7.
Is Varadkar still at this debate? Or, as I suspect, is it a badly programmed Varadkar robot which has malfunctioned and is being rebooted by FG tech hacks hiding in a hotel room across the street? #ClaireByrneLive
— Joe Donnelly (@kildarejoe) January 27, 2020
6.
5.
Micheal just thanked Claire for moderating the debate so well using the exact same phraseology as Leo did 60 seconds earlier #cblive pic.twitter.com/HhW3fMVVyM
— Cianan Brennan (@ciananbrennan) January 27, 2020
4.
He hasn't mentioned the subject but Eamon Ryan has been trying to stop himself from channeling his inner wolf here. (Photo by Niall Carson/PA) #cblive pic.twitter.com/KnvXib205a
— Steven Carroll (@carrollste) January 27, 2020
3.
2.
“Micháel crashed the economy, Leo is building the most expensive hospital in the world”
Stop the damn match, Mary Lou has won it #GE2020 pic.twitter.com/hlAKc3iQvh— Darren Cleary (@RadioCleary) January 27, 2020
1.
The only person I actually want to elect here is Claire Byrne #cblive
— Fiona Flynn (@Fiona_Flynn) January 27, 2020