*Liam Boyce.
KILKISHEN’s Liam Boyce claimed the individual speaker award at the country’s longest-running third-level debating competition.
On Friday, Liam joined illustrious company after winning the individual speaker award at The Irish Times Debate held in Queens University, Belfast. He was representing the University of Galway’s Lit & Deb society.
Liam follows in the footsteps of the late broadcaster Marian Finucane (1971), current Attorney General Rossa Fanning (1999), retired army captain and current Senator Tom Clonan (IND) (1990), activist Eamonn McCann (1965) and High Court judge Cian Ferriter (1992) in winning the accolade.
Rob Fitzpatrick and Adrianne Ward of UCD’s Literary & Historical Society (L&H) were crowned team winners.
Speakers were competing for the Demosthenes Trophy for best team, and the Christina Murphy Memorial Trophy for best individual, as well as places on an all-expenses-paid tour of the United States for the three winning speakers.
A dozen speakers took part in the final, the initial stages of the competition commenced in autumn and attracted in the region of 250 third-level contestants. The Irish Times Debate competition, which began 65 years ago, is an all-island debating championship, open to any full-time third-level student.
The judging panel praised the high standard of this year’s finalists and said the margins between the contestants were “exceptionally tight”. Adjudicators included Irish Times editor Ruadhán Mac Cormaic; Prof Geert Dewulf, pro-vice chancellor for engineering and physical sciences at Queen’s University Belfast; Hugh Guidera BL, a team winner of the competition in 2015; Ceara Tonna-Barthet, a team winner last year; and Prof Brent Northup, chair of communications at Carroll College Montana and organiser of the US tour since 2000.
Students debated the motion, ‘This house believes that dialogue is dead’. Contestants who argued in favour of the proposition said the development of social media meant more people were “unmoored from reality” in a world where disinformation was rife and fewer people were listening to each other, creating “monologue, not dialogue”.
Those arguing against said dialogue and understanding had led to considerable political achievements such as the Belfast Agreement, and that healthy debate was alive and well among friends, families and loved ones.
Appearing in The Irish Times Debate was familiar territory for Liam who was in the 2023 final. He won the 2021 Model Council of the European Union alongside Eoghan Kinsella in 2021.
During his school days in St Joseph’s Secondary School in Tulla, he was part of a team which reached the final of the BT Young Scientist competition with a project analysing the impact of different election systems on the outcome in various jurisdictions. He was also invited to be a delegate in RTÉ’s Youth Assembly in Dáil Eireann in 2019.
