Final 15 May 1993 Conductor Noel Kelehan Executive supervisor Christian Clausen | Presenter(s) Fionnuala Sweeney Director Anita Notaro | |
 | ||
Venue Green Glens Arena Millstreet, Cork, Ireland | ||
The Eurovision Song Contest 1993 was the 38th Eurovision Song Contest and was held on 15 May 1993 in Millstreet, County Cork, Ireland. The presenter was Fionnuala Sweeney. Niamh Kavanagh was the winner of this Eurovision for Ireland with the song, "In Your Eyes". This was Ireland's fifth victory, and equalled the tally of five Eurovision victories achieved by France in 1977 and Luxembourg in 1983.
Contents
The location for this year's edition of the contest was unique, in that Millstreet, with a population at the time of just 1,500 people, was the smallest host town ever chosen for Eurovision, and indeed was the most remote. However, the venue, a large indoor well- equipped equestrian centre was deemed more than suitable as the location by RTÉ. With huge support from local and national authorities, plus several businesses in the region, the town's infrastructure was greatly enhanced in order to accommodate an event of this scale. It was also the largest outside broadcast ever attempted by state broadcaster RTÉ and was deemed a technical triumph for all involved. The stage was created by Alan Farquharson, who was also chief production designer two years later in Dublin.
BBC newsreader Nicholas Witchell caused controversy by remarking on the air, shortly before the contest, that it would be held "in a cowshed in Ireland." He subsequently apologized.
The top two countries of this contest were the same as the top two countries in the previous year's contest, being Ireland and the United Kingdom.
Pre-qualifying round
In the run-up to this contest, the European Broadcasting Union finally started to grapple with the explosion in the number of potential participating countries, caused by the dissolution of the Eastern bloc, and also by the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which had traditionally been the only communist country to take part in the contest. For the first time, then, a pre-qualifying round was introduced, but only for countries that had either never participated in the contest at all, or in the case of former republics of Yugoslavia, had not previously competed as nations in their own right. This was, however, merely a 'sticking-plaster' measure that was plainly not a sustainable solution for future years, as it would not be seen as remotely equitable. But in the meantime, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Estonia were left to battle it out in a special competition called Kvalifikacija za Millstreet in Ljubljana on 3 April for the mere three places available at the grand final in Millstreet. After some extremely tight voting, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia edged through.
Voting structure
Each country had a jury who awarded 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 point(s) for their top ten songs. The voting required a jury to deliberate in the midst of the ongoing war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Warm applause rang round the hall as a voice on a crackling phone line was heard to deliver the familiar greeting, "Hello Millstreet, Sarajevo calling". During the announcement of the scores by the Dutch jury, Sweeney got carried away with the audience's cheers and declared Ireland 12 points (which were going to Portugal) when they had only been awarded 10 – which was promptly corrected. By the final few juries it became clear that either Ireland or the United Kingdom were going to win. After the penultimate jury had voted, it looked to be a lost cause for second-placed Sonia of the UK as she was eleven points behind Niamh Kavanagh.
Ostensibly due to earlier technical difficulties, the final jury to announce their results was the Maltese jury. An expectant Irish crowd waited to hear Malta award anything between one and ten points to either the UK or Ireland – the result of which would have made it arithmetically impossible for Ireland to be caught. However, the name of neither country came up (the ten points instead surprisingly being awarded to Luxembourg). This of course meant that either the UK or Ireland must have failed to pick up any points from the final jury, and if it was Sonia that received the maximum twelve points, the seemingly impossible would have happened and the UK would snatch a single-point victory at the death. Instead it was Ireland that were awarded the final points of the evening, finishing with what looked in retrospect a comfortable twenty-three-point victory. Interestingly, given the way the votes were cast, having Malta's vote announced last was the only way for the contest for victory to go down to the final jury. 1993 was the last year that the points were announced by telephone.
12 points
Below is a summary of all 12 points in the final: