Debate may not affect poll

THE great debate between the two Tanaistes, Dick and Mary, will probably have little effect on the level of undecided voters with three full days to go in the campaign.

Dick didn't shift one PD vote away from Mary; Mary may have helped a few sleeping Labour voters to return to Dick.

The head to head won't determine the outcome of the election, however, because the two leaders, both performing well, acted true to form.

There was little to choose between them when Brian Farrell gave them two minutes each, at the start, to set out their stall. Mary Harney did what she always does best, speaking unscripted in broad strokes, right into the camera. She wanted to be part of the next Government. She wanted to be the first woman to lead a party into a partnership government. Bertie was a man whom she trusted and respected.

Devoid of the grand rhetoric, Dick was speaking from notes. He was first, however, to go straight to the difference between the parties of the two alternative Tanaistes. The new millennium, he said, would bring people together or see policies that divided people.

Mary Harney had a better start on the section on the economy. She boldly took over from the chairman. Why, she asked Dick, had they cut taxation by only one penny in Government and why did he support the tax amnesty for tax cheats in the budget in 1993?

Dick Spring put that to bed by suggesting that it was one subject she should discuss with Bertie.

He also scored when he reminded viewers that Mary had warned him the night before he went into Government with Fianna Fail in 1993 that "we had a nightmare with them for three years".

These lighthearted skirmishes apart, Dick won when he took Mary on her proposal to cut back on 25,000 jobs in the public sector. He was well briefed in his arguments. She simply lost that point. The book waving about the 25,000 job losses being "voluntary" just did not add up.

Bay the time they went on to the social policy section, Mary Harney was holding up Tony Blair's manifesto and Dick Spring was warning that Thatcherite policies were too harsh for this country.

There were no winners in the education portion of the debate.

Mary hit home hard with her question on the treatment of Mrs Brigid McCole on her deathbed but kept on talking instead of forcing Dick to answer it.

The Northern Ireland debate was the strangest section of the whole debate. On a topic on which Dick Spring could, and should win, he allowed Mary Harney to neuter the whole patch. She ably used the tactic of commending him for his hard work to her own advantage.

The most interesting part of the debate came at the end when the two were asked to say why they should have the job.

Mary got in the good quip that she wouldn't need two offices if she was in the next Government. One, she said, would do her fine. Dick was silent. He could have wondered whether the Tanaiste's Office was the symbol of partnership government. He could also have come back when she accepted that the smaller party can't get everything they want.

"It will be a partnership government," she then added. But Dick came back to steal the last word: "The policies you are advocating remind me of Margaret Thatcher."

The grand TV debate, in the end, turned out to be something of a draw for supporters of the two parties.

Dick Spring won cause he pointed up some of the inconsistencies in his opponent's policies. But Mary Harney won also because she showed she was a match for a Tanaiste of five years standing. She didn't lose the debate.