featured The Irish Times columnist and writer John Waters, former Progressive Democrats minister Liz O'Donnell, Fergus Finlay, former chef-de-cabinet of the Irish Labour Party and current chief executive of Barnardos, solicitor Catherine Ghent, and vice-president of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald. The third panel featured Noel Whelan, barrister with political background, Eddie Hobbs financial advisor with political future, Green party leader and Minister for the Environment John Gormley, MEP Mairéad McGuinness, editor of the Irish Daily Star Ger Colleran. John Boland, writing in the Irish Independent, described the final episode as "genuinely engrossing", saying that "reminiscence rather than recrimination won through". He described the overall programme as a "weird combination of the unmissable and the frequently unwatchable". Demise The final Questions and Answers aired on 29 June 2009. The decision was taken when the presenter, John stepped aside. It will be replaced by a similar programme said to involve public participation and to run in the same time slot on a Monday night. Some politicians were said to have welcomed the show's demise, saying it was "well past its sell-by date". One government Minister told the Evening Herald newspaper: "Government and opposition parties were finding it more and more difficult to get people to go on a show that was late at night and at the start of the week to debate topics which had been trashed to death on every other show over the weekend." Prime Time presenter Miriam O'Callaghan was speculated upon as a replacement but insisted she knew nothing of the show's departure until she read about it on the RTÉ website. References 1980s Irish television series 1990s Irish television series 1986 Irish television series debuts 2009 Irish television series endings Irish television news shows RTÉ News and Current Affairs