LAST NIGHT’S CLAIRE Byrne Live saw an unusual showdown between a junior government minister and Eamon Dunphy.

Dunphy was on the panel after fronting a report on the differences between government spending in France and Ireland.

The outspoken broadcaster was aiming to highlight the great social services on offer in France as opposed to Ireland where childcare and good healthcare are unaffordable for lots of families.

The report featured, among other things, Dunphy talking about how great France is while walking through a wine cellar.

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Then we came to debate featuring the recently-released Paul Murphy and Dunphy on one side and junior finance minister Simon Harris and consumer journalist Sinead Ryan on the other.

But the only real show in town was Dunphy v Harris…

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“France is a great country,” Harris began.

Then he proceeded to hammer France and outline all the things that aren’t great about it, including €50 billion of planned spending cuts over the next few years.

Channelling Dunphy’s bessie mate Johnny Giles, Harris noted:

“You need to look at each country on its merits.”

Dunphy’s response?

“You’re wrong on the facts, and you’re confused.”

Ouch.

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Dunphy claimed that that in fact France wasn’t going to implement €50 billion in spending cuts.

Yes they are, said Harris and so it went on…

A short time later Harris noted that Dunphy had once described Ireland as “a dump”.

Not true, said Dunphy:

“I said it was a kip.”

An important distinction.

Then unfortunately, in the interests of fairness and balance, Claire had to let the other panellists speak and that was all fairly boring.

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A few minutes later, Harris had a bit of a pop at Murphy and there was a brief row over that morning’s dawn arrest of the Socialist Party TD.

“I don’t think anyone is making political points out of this, except Paul,” he said.

This had Dunphy up in arms and he started talking about Clare Daly’s arrest before Claire (Byrne) brought it back to the main topic.

So, Dunphy started banging on about Greece and Spain and Harris looked a little confused:

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Then the Fine Gael TD quickly got back to haranguing Dunphy:

“When you’re not describing your country as ‘a kip’ or walking through wine cellars…”

Dunphy was up in arms: “Would you mind not engaging in personal insults?”

So to finish off Harris had this zinger:
https://vine.co/v/OUp3nwHuPVK

The debate went on a few minutes longer, but the real match was all over.

After that Charlton dig, we have to give it to Harris on points, or as one tweeter pointed out:

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As for France? A good country, but not a great country, as Dunphy might say.

Originally published on TheJournal.ie 

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