Catherine Connolly holds a commanding lead in the presidential election with just over a week to go before votes are cast, according to the latest Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll.

The poll finds that Connolly, on 38 per cent, has almost double the support of her nearest rival, Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, on 20 per cent. Support for the Fianna Fáil candidate, Jim Gavin, who stopped his presidential campaign last week, but is still on the ballot paper, is at just 5 per cent.

Pat Leahy joins Hugh Linehan to talk about the significance of Connolly's lead, the mountain Humphreys now has to climb to win and what her campaign may do in the final week of the race.

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As independent candidate Catherine Connolly and Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys enter the final nine days of the campaign, Jack Horgan Jones and Ellen Coyne join Hugh Linehan to launch our daily podcast coverage.

• A motion of no confidence in Simon Harris over controversies in Children’s Health Ireland and waiting times for scoliosis surgery was itself a presidential election event. 

• Meanwhile Heather Humphreys has been on the campaign trail in Monaghan, with Ellen following her. It’s safe ground for the former Cavan-Monaghan TD. But is she spending too much time on home turf? 

• Jack and Ellen compare the Humphreys and Connolly campaigns. Connolly has led in the latest polls, but who has the momentum? 

• The Humphreys campaign is seeking the support of disenchanted centre-left voters, with help from ex-Greens Brian Leddin and Pauline O'Reilly, who this week said they regret their former party's support for Connolly.

• The two-horse race means intense focus on the nature of the two candidates. Could that mean the result will be more divisive than presidential elections past? 

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Hugh talks to Ronan McCrea, professor of constitutional and European law at University College London, about his new book, The End of the Gay Rights Revolution. McCrea believes that the achievements of the most successful civil rights movement of the last few decades may be more politically fragile than most people assume. He argues that these successes were largely an incidental dividend of the wider sexual revolution rather than a standalone victory. What law and culture give quickly, he says, they can also take away.

The book traces the shift from decriminalisation to equality, the AIDS-era turn to pragmatism, and the post-marriage-equality problem of purpose. McCrea contends that movement overreach, mission creep to ever-broader agendas, and a reluctance to confront awkward truths leaves freedoms exposed to changing demographics, populism and a revived moral conservatism. The conversation asks what a strategy of consolidation rather than perpetual expansion would actually look like and whether it carries costs as well as benefits in a world where history rarely moves in straight lines.

The End of The Gay Rights Revolution is published by Polity.

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Ellen Coyne and Harry McGee join Hugh Linehan to look back on the week in politics:

·      With Jim Gavin gone, the presidential election is now a two-horse race between Catherine Connolly and Heather Humphreys, and a more combative one at that as the third live debate on Thursday on RTÉ Radio’s Drivetime will attest. Is Heather Humphreys trying to appeal to voters on the left who haven’t made their mind up about Connolly yet?

·      As the timetable of who knew what and when becomes apparent in the Jim Gavin controversy, could those running his campaign have done anything to dampen the impact of the revelation around an unpaid debt to a former tenant from Gavin’s time as a landlord in 2009? And why did Gavin go ahead and participate in RTÉ’s televised debate last Sunday when the game was already effectively up?

·      And will Wednesday’s marathon Fianna Fáil party meeting provide enough catharsis for a cohort within the party questioning Micheál Martin’s leadership in the wake of the Jim Gavin fiasco?

Plus, the panel picks their favourite Irish Times pieces of the week:

·      Manchán Magan remembered, Japan’s Iron Lady, and Ray D’Arcy leaves RTÉ.

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Yesterday’s budget spelled out the Government’s tax and spending plans for next year. But what happens after that?

Barra Roantee of Trinity College Dublin’s Department of Economics says it is “shocking” that there is no plan beyond 2026.

“Last year we had five-year-ahead forecasting. The year before was four-year. We’re meant to be submitting a medium term plan to the European Commission.

This is part of our obligations, and we were told that was going to happen over the summer. Then, it’ll happen near the budget. It still hasn’t happened, and we still have no detail. We don’t know what spending is meant to be in 2027, 2028”. 

He also highlights the lack of detailed costings to underpin our budgetary decisions.

“In the UK they’ll have hundreds of pages of costing documents for each policy decision and we have nothing. We have, like, a page”. 

Roantree is also highly critical of the way Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers have conveyed their decisions, including “astronomical spending increases” that end up being far higher, he says, than is claimed on Budget Day. 

“These costings are a cynical wheeze, innumerate, and they’re being used to, I think at this stage, cook the books”. 

On today’s podcast Rowntree talks to Hugh Linehan and Pat Leahy about Budget 2026. 

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Ellen Coyne and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh to talk about the stunning news of Jim Gavin's withdrawal from the presidential race, leaving Heather Humphreys and Catherine Connolly in a head-to-head battle.

The news has infuriated Fianna Fáil backbenchers and leaves party leader Micheál Martin and campaign director Jack Chambers with big questions to answer over how Gavin was selected and how his campaign was run.

There is also the question of which of the remaining candidates benefits most from Gavin's withdrawal.

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Pat Leahy and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh Linehan to talk about the week in politics: 

We already know next Tuesday’s budget is going to be a much less generous affair than recent years. Jack and Pat share what they know about the tough stance being taken by Ministers Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers in negotiations, including one Government source’s characterisation of Chambers as akin to Margaret Thatcher: “no, no, no”. 

Of the three presidential hopefuls, Catherine Connolly has run the strongest campaign so far. But could the news that she employed a woman convicted of firearms offences hinder her in gathering the votes she needs?

Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin’s campaign also made some missteps this week, hampering the novice politician’s campaign as it finds its feet. 

Security issues are at the top of the European agenda thanks to the ongoing war in Ukraine and the fear of Russian cyberattacks and drone incursions. 

Finally the panelists pick their favourite Irish Times journalism of the week including Senator Michael McDowell’s explanation for why he didn’t nominate Maria Steen, the passing of Martin Mansergh and a relatable personal problem. 

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Fresh from the hostile grass arena of Bethpage, where supporters of the US Ryder Cup team spent the weekend abusing their European opponents, Washington correspondent Keith Duggan returns to the podcast to discuss the latest:

• Some commentators have tried to link the boorish behaviour of US golf fans to the ascendancy of Trumpism. Is that justified?

• What lies behind the steady level of popular support for president Trump?

• With the dust settling on Charlie Kirk's killing and the febrile aftermath, what meaning will those events hold in the future of the MAGA movement?

• The US government shutdown - why it is happening and what it means.

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Hugh interviews Albanian academic and author Lea Ypi about her new book Indignity: A Life Reimagined. The book is an exploration of political, historical and philosophical themes through the story of Ypi's grandmother, Leman Ypi, who experienced Albania’s tumultuous 20th century, from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, through fascism, Nazism, communism and its fall.

Lea talks about how literature helps us hear silenced histories - particularly those of women. She also discusses nation formation, the role of archives, and the analogies between historical and current political crises.

Lea Ypi is Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Indignity: A Life Reimagined is published by Penguin.

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