Trinity students Eoghan Quinn and Aislinn Carty, representing Dublin University Philosophical Society (the Phil), have been crowned team champions of the 60th Irish Times Debate.
Quinn and Carty won a debate with the motion “this house believes the justice system is too weak on crime”, seeing off speakers from University College Dublin, NUI Galway and the Law Society of Ireland.
Held in Trinity’s Exam Hall, the debate saw UCD’s Rachael Mullally win the individual speaker’s award – with the Phil’s Harry Hogan finishing second.
UCD’s Mark Smyth and Cora Keegan were the runners up in the team competition.
Quinn and Carty secured the Demosthenes Trophy for best team, while Mullally took home the Christina Murphy Memorial Trophy. All three winning speakers won a place on a month-long tour of the US.
The final of the Irish Times Debate – the country’s longest third-level debating competition – was hosted by the Historical Society (the Hist) and chaired by the chief justice, Mr Justice Frank Clarke, a former finalist.
Since October last year, the competition has seen 162 third-level students battle it out to be crowned champions, with teams paired into two and facing it off in the debating chambers of the country’s universities, such as University College Cork, UCD and Queen’s University Belfast.
Four semi-finals, each producing one team and one individual winner, were held earlier this month to decide the finalists for the grand final.
Sitting on the adjudication panel of the grand final included Irish Times Editor Paul O’Neill; former Trinity Pro-Chancellor Prof David McConnell; Ambassador Maeve Collins; Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC; chair of communications at Carroll College Montana Prof Brent Northup; former debate winner Aislinn Tully and former finalist Ross McGuire.
Former winners of the competition have gone on to successful careers in law, medicine, media, politics and theatre. Presidents Mary Robinson and Michael D Higgins are both former winners, as well as politicians Brian Lenihan and Mary Harney.
