Improved Banotti match for McAleese

Mary McAleese didn't shine, as she has done lately, on last night's Late Late Show debate among the five presidential candidates. Mary Banotti matched her performance for the first time.

Prof McAleese had greater reason to be defensive after the most political week of the campaign. Ms Banotti only had her leader's lunch engagement with Mr Eoghan Harris to trip her up.

The current favourite to win the election, Ms McAleese, had "no particular view" as to whether Mr Gerry Adams's endorsement of her candidacy was a help or a hindrance. Did she ask him for his vote? "I am not on speaking terms to that extent with him", she replied.

Her final response, when the question arose from the audience for a second time, was that if people had a problem, it was with him "not me". She neither welcomed nor rejected his vote.

She had a problem again in identifying any known unionists who support her candidacy. Mr Chris McGimpsey's refutation of such support was predictable, she said, "given the Eoghan Harris business". However, she couldn't name any supporters within the spectrum of unionism.

She was deft at throwing in the Fianna Fail revelation that Mr Harris had lunched with the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, last Thursday. The lunch raised questions, she said, which were not for Mary Banotti to answer but Mr Bruton himself.

This issue put Ms Banotti on her stickiest wicket. "Certainly, I can't be held responsible for whom John Bruton lunches with." Putting a firm distance between herself and her party, she said that her only experience with Eoghan Harris was an article he wrote at the start of the campaign saying that she should be out of it.

On the softer role of the Presidency questions, Ms Banotti managed to draw with the constitutional lawyer, Prof McAleese, leaving it now to the choice of the voters.

The best lines of the debate, however, came from the three outsiders. Adi Roche, as usual, was bubbly and talkative. The row between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, she said, had downgraded all five candidates. She would give up half of her presidential salary to fund a children's commission.

Dana, who also performed well, disclosed quite openly that she "would have a difficulty" about abortion. She would decide, at the time, what to do about abortion legislation. Could it be a resigning matter? "It would depend on the circumstances. It might".

The biggest frisson of the night came when Derek Nally spoke of casting off his advisers.