Galway put on Stout Performance in Debating World Championships

The annual World Debating Championship is a relatively young endeavour. It was first held only 16 years ago by Glasgow Debating Union. The competition was initiated by Societies of the British isles & Ireland and this is reflected in the continued dominance in voting power on the World Council. in numbers competing and in the number of wins credited to this part of he world. The main competition debates are exclusively in the English language. There is also a smaller competition for countries who have English as their second language. The best of these are selected for a Final. Alas we Irish, despite what it says in the constitution , are considered ineligible for this!

Competing nations come from four continents, south America being the only absentee. This years event, hosted by U.C.C., was visited by teams from Australia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Croatia, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Kenya, Malaysia, & South Africa to name a few. The competition is an impromptu event, with a round robin section first of 9 debates scored and matched based on the “Swiss League” or power matching system. The top 32 teams from these initial debates then go forward to a knockout section which ultimately selects a winner. There is no fixed “World’s Style”, although recent efforts are aiming to change this, which leaves the style at the choice of the Host College. U.C.C. chose this year to use a “British Parliamentary style” similar to that of the Observer Mace competition.

Galway first participated in the Worlds Last year. Under the ambitious Auditorship of John Sweeney the Society managed to send two teams to the Worlds in Princeton.( - Clodagh Beresford & Richard Brennan, David Healy & Brian Hughes). The results were impressive for our first event as the team of David Healy and Brian Hughes won 6 and drew one out of nine, finishing 44th out of 228 competitors. This year hopes were high of making the last 32.

The teams representing Galway were Marguerite Clancy & Brian Hughes, Clodagh Beresford & Michelle de Brún and Mary Cosgrove & David Healy. With the debate on home ground and in a familiar style expectations were high in every Irish camp of making the break. However these hopes were dashed when only 2 Irish teams, U.C.D. -A and King’s Inn - A qualified for the final stages. The eventual final televised on R.T.É. consisted of Middle Temple, London, Sydney, Macquarie (also from Sydney) and Edinburgh debating the motion “that strong dictatorship is preferable to weak democracy”. The eventual winners were Macquarie. Galway teams finished 59th-Hughes/Clancy, l03rd-Cosgrove/Healy and 187th Beresford/de Brún out of 247 competing.

The event was deemed to be social success with U.C.C. reaping much praise for living up to its logo-motto “Some people thing that the Irish are only interested in having a good time - they’re right’. Next year’s hosts, Stellenbosch University, South Africa will have a lot to live up to.

David Healy