Conal Thomas, any chance we're going to see such protests turn to the streets here in Ireland? And is our government prepared in that regard?

Well, I think there's a couple of things to it.

One, we're heading into winter, so you generally tend not to get protests in Ireland in winter.

That's the first point, although it seems moot in the context of this.

We had similar protests, obviously, recently.

I mean, we had the fuel protests in the spring and before that as a result of the stabbing in Parnell Square, the Dublin riots.

So we're not immune to this.

Not our fault, by the way.

You're making plans based on the money available to you, and if someone comes and says, "Actually, just 20 million less," that is whopper.

Well, the promise of the three-year funding plan was that we get 260 million euro, including the license fee next year, which is what we put in our projections and what we budgeted for and what we've commissioned sport and drama and so on, on that basis.

So, uh, it's very difficult this late time of the day to be told it's, we're gonna get, get 20 million euro less.

It is, and there was actually really, I thought it was kind of almost ominous language from Kevin Bacher towards the end of his email to staff, where he, "We will have to now make some serious decisions about what we're going to do over the next couple of years as a result of this funding cut." It's interesting.

Look at the figures on this, though, for a second.

RTE said it achieved 90% of its reforms, right? 90% of 260 million is about 235 million euro.

So Patrick O'Donovan has cut the legs out from that last 10%, which as we know, is the VEP scheme.

Should they not have been discussing that before now?

Mm

... as well, between, the cooperation between London and Dublin on that.

I mean, Andy Burnham has said he's going to deal with, I suppose, uh, the legacy, taking almost a, he's, he's used the past Hillsborough approach, right? Now, what that looks like exactly, I don't know, but it's str- strong language given the Hillsborough tragedy and what that, and what that evokes, and the amount of investigation stuff that have gone into that.

So I think you'll find Micheál Martin and Andy Burnham relatively on the same page here.

I, I don't know how much Trump's comments are going to be discussed between both men.

It'll be interesting to see, does Micheál Martin go further? It, it's quite possible you'll see a bit of a downplaying of the Northern Ireland issue, particularly in relation to a border poll and a unified Ireland coming out of that meeting, coming out of the readout, because Micheál Martin's already said this week, well, there's, there's a lot more than just that between Dublin and London.

Okay.

The momentum is there, and you can see it.

He kind of shifted a little bit around in his chair.

Yeah, shifted a little bit around his chair, and then pretty soon afterwards, we were all kind of, you know yourself, you're, you're bustled out of the room, and it was all anyone was really talking about, and it was, it was every journalist turning to each other going, "There, there's the paper written tomorrow.

There's the front page.

There's the splash.

What's th- what's so-and-so gonna say?" "What are Sinn Féin gonna say?" was one of the immediate questions, because we know that they, along with other parties, were part of the protest, out protesting, uh, this weekend, particularly in Dublin.

So immediately, we were kind of onto Sinn Féin press office, seeing what they're gonna say, and we've had a statement now from Mary Lou McDonald.

But I mean, the whole thing, you know yourself, Mary, you've been in these situations before, Maeve, in these situations where it's tightly controlled, and you're kind of funneled into this room, and the White House press staff tend to be a lot more, uh, aggressive and very controlling of how it's going.

I'm all about mergers." So it was very different, but to me it suggests that, um, he knows what he's at here, you know? And the fact that he's commenting on the reaction that it's likely to provoke, I think suggests that he's trying to needle the British government.

I mean, we were talking about this

before we came on.

I was like, well, hang on a minute.

What does it mean for someone who's, you might point to someone who's over 40, 50.

But someone who's 22, 25, I mean, what about them as well? And just to point, just back to the UK for a minute, right? One of the big questions I had today, and I think people were trying to get to the bottom of was, what are you going to do different than Australia? Which hasn't really worked.

The language coming from the UK government was, and I'll reiterate, higher effective age assurance and rigorous enforcement.

Now, if you can explain to me what that means, and by the way, the UK government also going to expect Ofcom, the regulator there, to bring them proposals for how it should work.

things that he said?

... fighting against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael? And so if Holly Cairns wants the Social Democrats to grow, as Aisling has kind of suggested, is it Sinn Féin she needs to target more than Fine Gael, say?

I think it's a crowded field, and I think, as Aisling touched on this, 'cause I actually looked back a couple of weeks ago, I didn't quite get around to it, I was gonna go through every single leader's questions of last year, I think I got about a month or two in and look at what they were doing.

More often than not, you find Social Democrats will follow Sinn Féin's lead, at least it did in the early days, whereas Labour would raise these sort of issues, a little, like climate, like Gaza, things that maybe don't always impact the everyday voter.

In terms of the united left, Kevin, I mean, I think [scoffs] we saw it during the Connolly campaign, but if you remember, days later, Mary Lou immediately es- escotched any prospect of a united left candidate down in Galway West to replace, uh, Catherine Connolly in that constituency.

We'll find out in a few weeks, we touch on that in a minute.

I think there is, I think there is a crowded space.

I think in terms of Labour, they are, like, Labour are trying to play catch-up with the Social Democrats as much as anything else, I think, and we would've seen this, uh, more recently, where Ivana stepped back from doing, Ivana Bacik stepped back from doing leaders' questions on a Thursday to give more space to her new TDs, something that strategists in the Social Democrats have pointed to as a deliberate strategy to build up the profiles and have less of a hierarchical party.

How does all that play out in what we're talking about here? Can we take anything from, from the national polls?

Mm.

Now, how much you buy into that excuse, we'll leave that to one side.

And so, on, and then on the other hand, you have this concern that in a couple of weeks when things, if things don't settle down, if there isn't a de-escalation, that's when people are gonna really start feeling it in their pocket.

That's when infl- that's when people start feeling the increased energy in their, their, sorry, the increased energy bills, household bills, and that'll feed through to, to nearly everything.

And in the Dáil this week, we've had kind of growing calls, I suppose you'd probably call them, for some sort of emergency intervention.

Now, p- some of this is naked politicking.

It is-

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guess who doesn't want TSMC and all these guys to land in their country and build.

TSMC is an interesting one, actually, because, you know, they would produce the chips for NVIDIA.

Ireland has a long history with Intel, but you'll remember a couple of years ago, Intel actually went to Germany with their big plant instead of Ireland.

So the government basically launched what's known as Silicon Island a couple of weeks ago.

It's part of, I suppose, a major, you might describe it as a major shift in industrial policy in terms of trying to lure those big chip makers to Ireland over the next few years.

We know, for instance, that there's big concerns over the drop-away in corporation tax that could happen over the coming years, the ongoing, I suppose, what you call trade war.

between, well, effectively the United States and the rest of the world.

Is it moving fast enough or is it already too late?

guess who doesn't want TSMC and all these guys to land in their country and build.

TSMC is an interesting one, actually, because, you know, they would produce the chips for NVIDIA.

Ireland has a long history with Intel, but you'll remember a couple of years ago, Intel actually went to Germany with their big plant instead of Ireland.

So the government basically launched what's known as Silicon Island a couple of weeks ago.

It's part of, I suppose, a major, you might describe it as a major shift in industrial policy in terms of trying to lure those big chip makers to Ireland over the next few years.

We know, for instance, that there's big concerns over the drop-away in corporation tax that could happen over the coming years, the ongoing, I suppose, what you call trade war.

between, well, effectively the United States and the rest of the world.

Is it moving fast enough or is it already too late?