Fine Gael leader Simon Harris’s ardfheis speech had the highest viewership ratings of any party leader for televised party conference speeches over the last two years, figures released by RTÉ show.
Some 208,000 people watched as Mr Harris addressed his party in April promising “a new energy” and to “fix housing once and for all” – perhaps the novelty factor of the soon-to-be youngest Taoiseach bringing almost a quarter of the total TV audience share that evening.
The next highest ratings were for Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald last November with 167,000 watching as she told her party they would “get the job done” on housing and spoke out against the war in Gaza. She got 109,000 viewers for her 2022 speech.
Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin is frequently most popular party leader in opinion polls but it appears that does not necessarily translate to television viewers. He got 121,000 viewers for his 2022 ardfheis address, 114,000 in 2023, and 88,000 watched his most recent televised speech in April when he made budget pledges on tax reductions and welfare increases.
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Mr Harris’s predecessor as Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar got 152,000 viewers for his ardfheis speech in 2022.
The viewership figures for the political speeches are all numbers for those watching live on RTÉ One. More people tuned in on catch-up channel RTÉ One +1, though in far smaller numbers. The average audience for RTÉ One between 6:30pm and 7:30pm on Saturday evenings in 2023 was 137,000. It was 135,000 during the first five months of 2024.
Most of the political speeches had below-average audiences levels.
The lowest viewership figures was for the Social Democrats in June 2022 with just 9,000 watching then co-leaders Róisín Shortall and Catherine Murphy’s address to their national conference. It was broadcast at the party’s choosing at the earlier time of 5pm which coincided with a Uefa Nations Cup football match between the Republic of Ireland and Scotland, with about 300,000 watching that on RTÉ 2.
Current party leader Holly Cairns got 122,000 live viewers for her conference speech in February this year.
On the figures from 2022, Ms Shortall said “the earlier timing didn’t work out well” and, noting the clash with the football match, added: “maybe we would have been better off reading the sports results at that time on a Saturday.”
She said the party would like to think the “impressive” viewing figures for Ms Cairns’s 2024 speech is “a truer reflection of the numbers we would normally expect”.
Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik’s conference speech in 2023 got 105,000 viewers and her most recent televised address to party members in March got an audience of 131,000.
Former Green Party leader Eamon Ryan’s conference speech viewership figures were 92,000 in 2022, 92,000 in 2023 and 83,000 in 2024.
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