Head-to-head: Presidential election gets confrontational

Ellen Coyne and Harry McGee join Hugh Linehan to look back on the week in politics:

·      With Jim Gavin gone, the presidential election is now a two-horse race between Catherine Connolly and Heather Humphreys, and a more combative one at that as the third live debate on Thursday on RTÉ Radio’s Drivetime will attest. Is Heather Humphreys trying to appeal to voters on the left who haven’t made their mind up about Connolly yet?

·      As the timetable of who knew what and when becomes apparent in the Jim Gavin controversy, could those running his campaign have done anything to dampen the impact of the revelation around an unpaid debt to a former tenant from Gavin’s time as a landlord in 2009? And why did Gavin go ahead and participate in RTÉ’s televised debate last Sunday when the game was already effectively up?

·      And will Wednesday’s marathon Fianna Fáil party meeting provide enough catharsis for a cohort within the party questioning Micheál Martin’s leadership in the wake of the Jim Gavin fiasco?

Plus, the panel picks their favourite Irish Times pieces of the week:

·      Manchán Magan remembered, Japan’s Iron Lady, and Ray D’Arcy leaves RTÉ.

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