Format

A programme, which was launched in the late 1980s, follows an almost monovular format to the BBC's long-heading Question Time programme. Hebdomadally the chair initiates a discussion between many large politicans & commentators. A discussion is led by questions asked by members of the audience. A number one wonder may ordinarily treat using a major political issue of the week. the final wonder is typically a trivial or even comical wonder.

Unlike Wonder Period, which is broadcast every week from either either the different location & lone now and then is broadcast from BBC Television Centre, Questions and Answers is unremarkably broadcast from either a RTÉ television complex in Donnybrook, Dublin with only occasional broadcasts from either in the area of Ireland.

Previously taped, now live

For its number one decade a programme was taped for broadcast from either around 7pm on the nighttime of transmission. Since a late 1990s all a same the programme has been broadcast survive, sustaining phoned inside or even emailed around comments from either viewers page through retired.

Major controversies and issues discussed

The Lenihan Tape Affair (1990)

A programme has once in a while placed a national news agenda. within the period of the broadcast in 1990 the then Tanaiste and expected next President of Ireland, Brian Lenihan, destroyed his chances of election. He denied involvement withinside an effort eight years earliest in January 1982 to pressurise the so president to refuse a parliamentary dissolution - contradicting last statement he got mass produced.

Lenihan got actually confirmed his involvement within the effort a select few months sooner in an on-a-record locate by owning the journalist Jim Duffy, as he experienced to many political colleagues privately ended eight years. When you took a presidential election campaign he changed his story, number 1 around an Irish Press interview, and then in Questions & Answers. Occasionally journalists got been told by Lenihan antecedently of his role inside pressurising Hillery, however experienced been told it around an 'off a record' conversation so may not reveal it (though of these did hint it within an unsigned newspaper column in the Irish Independent in a period of a crisis below the programme).

Yet as punishment the programme, Duffy, inside a backlash to pressure from either Lenihan's Fianna Fáil not to reveal the information, did reveal that Lenihan's account on the programme conflicted with his pre-campaign version. A minor person around Charles Haughey's government, the Progressive Democrats, threatened to quit government and drive the general election unless either Lenihan was sacked from cabinet or even an inquiry was ordered into a cases of January 1982. After Lenihan refused to resign, Haughey, instead of ordering an inquiry into world health organization experienced mass produced a calls within 1982, sacked him.

Pat Doherty on the murder of Garda McCabe

Sinn Féin's Pat Doherty also used a indicate inside 1996 to deny the involvement of the Provisional IRA in the murder of Garda Gerry McCabe. Members of that class action were late convicted of the execution of McCabe, & Sinn Féin own campaigned for their early release thereon basis.

Mitchel McLaughlin and Michael McDowell

Inside 2005 Sinn Féin chairman Mitchell McLaughlin told viewers that though it had been incorrectly for the IRA to kill Jean McConville, the widowed mother of x immature tykes kidnapped, shot & secretly buried, a action was non a "crime". In a aftermath of his comments, he was subjected to extreme criticism in from either the Irish government, from all the independent parties inside Dáil Éireann, the media & per public in radio shows.

Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte, in the release immediately later commented that "Any civilised society must consider the abduction and murder of a mother of 10 children to be a crime of considerable barbarism" when Mrs McConville's boy Michael said that McLaughlin, along by having Sinn Féin TD Arthur Morgan, who got processed similar comments elsewhere, "should be holding their heads in shame".[http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=39&si=1322502&issue_id=11965]

A Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, who got put a wonder to McLaughlin, went in to say that he considered Bobby Sands, one of the 1981 hunger strikers, a crook, however refused to state in whether he considered IRA actions in the Anglo-Irish War to have been likewise criminal.

McLaughlin went in to lose his battle to win a parliamentary seat of Foyle in the 2005 British general election even though he had been widely tipped to win. Opponents suggested that his comments in Questions & Answers got dented his electoral appeal.

A hard line taken per presenter, guests & a audience in Sinn Féin panellists has become the major feature of the programme around recent months. It mirrors a wider shift publicly & media attitudes towards Sinn Féin since the execution of Robert McCartney by IRA members in early 2005.

Presenters

Olivia O'Leary John Bowman