These line-up check pieces usually begin with a recap of the country’s recent ESC history, but in this case it might be more appropriate to look at the composer’s track record, because Jonas Gladnikoff – who has a hand in the 2014 Irish entry – has been a regular in our #esc chatroom community right since its earliest days. After just missing out on qualification with “Et Cetera” in 2009, Jonas’s song for Niamh Kavanagh took Ireland back to the grand final in 2010 after a run of poor results – and the Emerald Isle has been a permanent Saturday night feature ever since thanks to the performances of Jedward and Ryan Dolan.

So what do Jonas and the seven-time ESC winners have in store for us this year? A fantastically entertaining national final, for a start, though for all the wrong reasons – Linda Martin’s remarkable argument with mentor Billy McGuinness will live long in the memory, and has given the Eurovision fan community a ready-made insult in “odious little man”. At the end of a long and eventful evening, however, it was Can-Linn featuring Kasey Smith who won the Eurosong competition and took the ticket to Copenhagen.

The national final performance of Heartbeat doesn’t make it immediately clear who Can-linn actually are – are they the collection of backing singers and slightly rubbish Irish dancers who accompanied Kasey on stage, or just a faceless studio project? The latter seems more plausible in light of the preview video, which focuses entirely on Kasey in a low-budget affair reminiscent of Anouk’s three minutes in front of a webcam last year. In any case, Kasey and her attractive look and smoky vocals are clearly front and centre of the overall presentation, and understandably so.

I’ve been tip-toeing around giving my verdict until now, for the simple reason that I don’t really have one. Heartbeat is located so firmly in the middle of the road that it’s in danger of being squashed by an overtaking lorry – it’s an ultra-safe, edge-free song supplemented with a sprinkling of generic Irish sounds and carefully crafted hints of “Only Teardrops” (though they need to be careful not to fall into the “Emmelie clone” trap, both visually and musically).

With nothing to recommend it in terms of outstanding features – including a vocalist who is similarly safe and unspectacular – its chances will rise and fall solely on the strength of the underlying song, and that’s where it becomes harder to predict its fate. Qualification from the semi in 7th (let’s say) and a final finish around 20th (let’s say) would seem quite logical – but under a voting system that encourages the “strong and safe” and in a year without any real standout entries, there could be upside scoreboard potential for an entry that aims quite shamelessly at the mainstream. Either way, it would come as a considerable surprise if Ireland failed to record their fifth successive qualification.

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