And then how long before that's wiped away and you spend the money twice?

Is it value for money, Ciarán? Well, I mean, look, nobody can object to temporary solutions when they're genuinely temporary, if that's what some of these structures are aimed for.

But, you know, like it can't be the default model for schools.

And we want to see permanent structures.

I mean, like I'm the chairman of a board of a national school in Ballyroan.

We have prefabs there that were brought in temporarily 20 odd years ago.

You know, the school has been waiting since about 2008 for a new school building.

You're on the board of a school,

Do you think it will move society towards narrowing the gender pay gap, Ciarán?

Well, I certainly welcome more transparency when it comes to pay.

But obviously, transparency without action behind it could be a bit of a box-ticking exercise.

I mean, one of the key things we need to change in this country is investment in childcare, you know, so that women aren't feeling that they're stuck in the workplace, that you can afford to go back to work.

We've got to, you know, even when it comes to paternity leave in this country, we are the fifth lowest in Europe when it comes to paternity leave.

Movember had a report out about that this week and that 70 men who take paternity leave in this country generally take a 75% pay drop.

And coupled with maybe a partner who's taking paternity leave, that's why households can't afford to do that.

So

You're going to say yes, are you? Obviously, Ciarán.

Yes, I am.

And in fact, our housing spokesperson, Conor Sheehan, introduced a bill earlier this year to bring in a three-year no-fault eviction ban.

Look, homeless figures are still going up.

And eviction figures are going up.

The highest eviction figures since the famine.

And we only have RTB figures for Q1 of this year so far.

Do you accept that by imposing a three year ban after the fact you're diluting the impact of it? after

So hopefully we'll get a truer picture then or a true picture then.

Yeah, I mean, look, the important thing is that no Irish company should be complicit in Russia's war machine.

And I take the point about jobs.

Obviously, that's very important to the area and the surrounding counties as well.

But, you know, if it's the case that this is sort of a critical industry, then nationalise it.

Sell, if it is the case that 55% of the sales are going to Europe, as the company is telling us, then take it over or have an arranged sale where it is possible to continue the business in operation while selling only to Europe.

What about the Russian

The issue at hand at the moment is that Anish as a company is not being sanctioned by the EU and the European Commission will make their decision.

Does that really mean, Ciarán O'Hearn from Labour, as your party has said, that there really is no Climate Action Plan at the moment then?

Well, that definitely seems to be the case.

I mean, this government is failing abysmally when it comes to climate.

We're miles off making any of the targets that they committed to just a couple of years ago in another government.

And the minister is always very satisfied that he's doing great in his job and talking about how well he's doing.

But we never hear from him.

at all about where actually he wants to do sorry we hear from him but we don't hear from him about what sectors he thinks can be doing better how are they going to actually improve things accelerate it because like Europe is heating at twice the rate as the rest of the world like we see it this week with the extreme heat in May record temperatures two days in a row in this country and elsewhere around Europe we saw it earlier this year with extreme flooding extreme weather storms are getting stormier as they say So, like, we have to do our bit.

That's a problem acknowledged

This shows how vulnerable Ireland is, even before considering other infrastructures.

I don't want to overplay any of the issues here.

You know, we have to take, obviously, defence very seriously, particularly during the presidency when all the focus is going to be on us and where we want to see Ireland leading by our values and projecting our values into Europe.

And that includes neutrality.

That includes, from our perspective, protection of the triple lock and the promotion of multilateralism and international law at a European level.

Are you

worried

about neutrality in Europe, the way things are going? Absolutely.