Arguing that Ireland should default pays off for King's Inns debaters

“JUST BECAUSE some people choose to buy fast cars doesn’t mean every single one of us is somehow culpable – this insanity started far further up the chain with light-touch regulation,” argued Áine Hartigan at the annual Irish Times Debate final on Friday night.

Speaking in favour of the motion that “This House would Default”, Hartigan and her King’s Inns team-mate Lorcan Price took first prize of the Demosthenes trophy for their account of why Ireland “should default on what it is unable to pay”.

Runners-up in the event, which promotes excellence in oratory and debating by third-level students, were Ross O’Mahony and Mark Thuillier of TCD Law Society, who also spoke in favour of the motion.

O’Mahony drew laughs from the crowd with his opening “I can see you’re nervous . . . another lawyer in charge of the finance brief”.

He argued that Ireland should “decouple private debt from sovereign debt” because attempting to pay the private debt “will be the ruin of our nation”.

His team-mate, Mark Thuillier, received the Christina Murphy Memorial Trophy for Best Individual for a speech in which he argued that “Brussels created its own moral hazard at the outset” and that Ireland’s debt is “a European problem that needs a European solution”.

Runner-up in the Best Individual category, Janine Ryan of UCD’s Literary and Historical Society, argued passionately in favour of the motion.

She said “we have guaranteed a debt that was never ours, it was the banks’”. She questioned “is our moral duty to private investors or to the vulnerable and the young who had nothing to do with this decision?”

Now in its 51st year, the competition saw over 300 students take part, with 12 finalists debating in front of a packed Griffith College auditorium in Dublin.

Other finalists on the night included Conor O’Hanlon and Conor McAndrew from UCD’s Commerce and Economics Society, who, arguing against the motion that Ireland should default, said “ we need to take the EU-IMF-shaped aspirin and grow up as a nation”.

David Brady of DCU said “we all fed the monster, we all have lessons to learn”, while fellow DCU student Ceile Varley argued against default, saying “I’m worried about what it will mean when we don’t have access to capital”.

Arguing in favour of default, Nikki Saarsteiner of King’s Inns said while we should take responsibility “we shouldn’t cripple ourselves doing it”.

Chairman of the debate and professor of genetics at Trinity College, David McConnell, who is also a former chairman of the Irish Times Trust, praised the debaters, saying “all of the participants, including those in the earlier rounds, have shown capability. They have put their foot forward, they have tried, and they put themselves out there.”

While the winners on the night all argued in favour of a default, when put to the house the motion was rejected.