The Literary & Debating Society, Bank of Ireland

Schools’ Debates ‘99

This year the society in its wisdom finally decided to let me loose on the public instead of cooping me up in the Kirwan all the time. I had the difficult but rewarding task of organising the Connaught Schools’ Debates. A task that I foolishly believed was going to be easy, and it is here that I would like to stop and give a thank you to Emmet Lynch and Caoimhín Mac Unfraidh by whom I was rightly conned!! They both told me it was going to be easy if I was organised. They both lied!! I don’t think that I have ever been so organised in my life and I have never been so stressed out. But then who wouldn’t. You start off thinking that every thing will go to plan and every one will fall into line with your plans and ideas!! I soon realised that if I was going to pull it off it would have to be me who was going to make concessions, and rearrange debates etc.

I have to say that despite all the little problems I have really enjoyed being Schools Convenor. The standard of debate has been as extraordinary as ever and some of the debates were quite amusing. One of my favourite ones was “That the North West needs a Jackie Healy Rae”. All of the speakers had done a great deal of preparation and they really let their views be known. What really amazed me though was that one team had actually gone to the trouble of ringing up the man himself. I was amazed that they could actually understand the man let alone quote him. I also enjoyed watching Keith Maye try to incorporate the word “Catharsis” intelligibly into a sentence while he dummy spoke.

We had to do a lot of travelling for these debates and the journeys up and down were fairly tiring for those of us who had been going back and forth. I would really like to thank all the adjudicators and drivers who had been kind enough to come along to debates, sometimes at short notice. I would especially like to thank one person in particular, who gave up numerous evenings in the pub in order to drive us around the place. Not only did she have to suffer being jolted around on country roads but she had to try and keep me calm on the way to the first debate, as well as being distracted by the constant chat of some nervous passengers. It is for all these reasons that I would like to say Roberta O’Brien you are an absolute star and thank you for not strangling me although I’m sure you were sorely tempted.

At the time of going to press I am right in the middle of the Semi Finals. On Monday the 22nd of February a motley crew of adjudicators and myself travelled to Ballina for the first Semi Final. The motion before the house was “That women should be prevented from joining the defence forces”, the standard of debate was excellent and it was a very interesting debate. I was very embarrassed to note that I had made the proposition mostly male and the opposition mostly female. The journey to and from Ballina was rather interesting as we seem to have taken the scenic route both ways. I suppose we were being stupid in supposing that the root might actually be sign posted. In fact there no signs for Ballina until you get to Castlebar and by then you’ve gone wrong anyway. So I would recommend that next year’s convenor invest in a map rather then having to rely on their sense of direction and then claim that the driver got pulled for speeding, when you turn up late. One good thing did come out of the trip, I finally got to see P Flynn’s highway.

To everyone involved in the competition I would like to say thank you for making my time as Schools Convenor so enjoyable. I am particularly grateful to all the competitors who through their interest and talent made the whole experience worthwhile.

And finally to next years Convenor, who ever that might be, you have the best job on the committee so make the most of it, have fun and Good Luck!!!

Cliona O’Keeffe

Schools Convenor