Questions and Answers <!-- STOP...do NOT change to 'was' -->is<!-- NOTE-remains as "is" per Wikipedia convention. See: Wikipedia:WikiProject Television/Style guidelines#Lead paragraphs. --> a topical debate television programme broadcast in Ireland for 23 years between 1986 and 2009.
Similar in format to the BBC television programme Question Time, it originally aired on Sunday nights but later moved to Monday nights when it was usually shown at 10.30 pm. The first two series were presented by Olivia O'Leary; however, John Bowman took over as chairperson for all subsequent series.
Broadcast on RTÉ One, the show typically featured politicians from large political parties as well as public figures who answered questions put to them by the audience. The final edition aired on 29 June 2009.
For its first decade the programme was taped for broadcast from approximately 19:00 on the night of transmission. From the late 1990s, however, the programme was broadcast live, with phoned-in or emailed-in comments from viewers read out on air.
Presenters
- Olivia O'Leary (1986–88)
- John Bowman (1988–2009)
- Vincent Browne (Guest Presenter)
History
Lenihan Tape Affair: 1990
The programme has occasionally set the national news agenda. During a broadcast in 1990 the then Tánaiste and expected next President of Ireland, Brian Lenihan, badly damaged his chances of being elected. He denied involvement in an effort eight years earlier in January 1982 to pressurise the then President to refuse a parliamentary dissolution – contradicting previous statement he had made.
Lenihan had actually confirmed his involvement in the effort some months earlier in an on-the-record interview with a journalist Jim Duffy, as he had to numerous political colleagues privately over eight years. During the presidential election campaign he changed his story, first in an Irish Press interview, and then on Questions and Answers. Some journalists had been told by Lenihan previously of his role in pressurising Hillery, but had been told it in an 'off the record' conversation and so could not reveal it (though one did hint it in an unsigned editorial in the Irish Independent during the crisis following the programme).
However following the programme, Duffy, in a backlash to pressure from Lenihan's Fianna Fáil not to reveal the information, did reveal that Lenihan's account on the programme conflicted with his pre-campaign version. The minor party in Charles Haughey's government, the Progressive Democrats, threatened to quit government and cause a general election unless either Lenihan was sacked from cabinet or an inquiry was ordered into the events of January 1982. When Lenihan refused to resign, Haughey, instead of ordering an inquiry into who had made the calls in 1982, sacked him.
The "ill-fated appearance" was remembered in the final episode of Questions and Answers in 2009. He said the government should change the constitution so that the assets of the religious orders who ran the industrial schools could be frozen. Presenter John Bowman in the final show just weeks later said that interruption was "by far the most memorable moment" in the history of Questions and Answers.
John Boland, writing in the Irish Independent, described the final episode as "genuinely engrossing", saying that "reminiscence rather than recrimination won through". He described the overall programme as a "weird combination of the unmissable and the frequently unwatchable".