Darragh O'Brien

So what exactly happened here?

Yeah, so James Brown, who is the Minister for Housing, he announced a new policy last week, which is going to very heavily constrain and reduce the number of houses that are available to be bought by approved housing bodies and used for social housing.

So approved housing bodies would be an organization, for example, like the Peter McVeary Trust.

You know, there's lots of different organizations like that, that then, you know, they buy a certain allocation of housing when there's a new development, and then that will often go on the market as social housing or housing.

yeah, you know, kind of reduced cost housing.

James Brown, his sort of the idea behind the policy is that by making that harder for, or like by capping the number of properties that can be bought by approved housing bodies, that it would notionally make it easier for private buyers to buy houses in the idea being that I suppose there are fewer properties there's less competition, you know, they don't have to be competing against approved housing bodies.

But it seems like the industry as a whole has kind of rejected this as an idea.

Certainly the approved housing bodies aren't happy with it, but even developers don't seem to think it's a good idea.

So, when the board decided in July, or, uh, uh, beg your pardon, the board decided in May, after the, um, [lips smack] the project was, the, the tests were failed, that it was, was going to have to crystallize these losses.

So, the board decided to put a note into its accounts, which it sent to the Minister Darragh O'Brien in, in May, that it was writing down the inv- the value of the investment that it had made in the broader National Train Control Center, of which this traffic management system was a, was a key component.

So, it wrote down the value of €50 million.

Now, those who know more about accountancy speak than I do maintain that in terms of, y- people might ask the difference in a write-down and a write-off.

It can award a contract to Siemens.

It can get the ball rolling on that, and we will have a network, a, a system across the network between, uh, uh, sometime between 2030 and 2031.

In the meantime, separately, in the Dublin area, the Minister Darragh O'Brien has said that he will provide probably up to 20 million euro over the next three years to try shore up the system that we have at the moment, and that's really in the, in the greater Dublin area, because that's where the real, um-

Congestion

So Shannon is ripe for all of this.

Um, but there is a bigger issue now that, um, my colleague, Minister Darragh O'Brien, and government and Dublin Airport Authority have to reflect on this court ruling.

Uh, but certainly, uh, as someone who's chairman of the Shannon Airport Users Group, who has great affinity to the airport, who speaks up for it every single week in the Dáil, I would see a certain short to medium opportunity here for Shannon, and I will be talking with airlines myself as well to encourage them to fully utilize Shannon in the months ahead.

There are no difficulties in Shannon, and they're all welcome to fly in and out, and I can guarantee you that the public here in the Midwest and further afield will support any routes that run from this airport.

And I suppose, is there a small hiccup along the way there in that the ruling still gives the government the leeway to, to ditch the plans if they ch-choose, so choose and, and Minister Darragh O'Brien has indic- in, it- there's indications that Minister Darragh O'Brien is in, is in favor of doing so?

Yeah.

Well, I, I, I've, I've been interviewed by, by Clare FM several times on this, and I mean, if I'm totally honest, uh, of course it would have suited Shannon way back if this cap remained in place forever and Dublin wasn't allowed to grow beyond a certain point, and Shannon, Cork, Knock, and other airports would benefit as a result.

And, uh, I, I, that's why whilst we might see some gains in the short term, um, what we overall need for Shannon is a strategy that supports it to grow in its own right, uh, exploiting all the advantages it has as well here in the west of Ireland.

The possibility of a new train station on the north side of Drogheda has received a bit of a boost, with the Minister for Transport, Darragh O'Brien, indicating that he understands the case for the proposal and that it remains under review.

The issue was raised in the Dáil by local representatives, including Sinn Féin TD Joanna Byrne and Fine Gael, uh, TD Paula Butterly.

Uh, the minister said that while a new station is not currently planned, the proposal will continue to be considered in light of population, uh, growth.

Until we have them, we don't actually know.

So we're all talking pie in the sky until we know the realities of that, and that's where we need to get government on board.

So I think Thursday's interaction with the Minister for Transport, Darragh O'Brien, um, that, that I had with him, I can't speak for anybody else's.

I know other people had interactions with him last week as well.

But certainly with mine, I think it was the first kind of public indication and recognition from government that there is logic in a trains, and they, they were the words the transport minister used to me, "There is logic in a train station for Drogheda North." So I think that is a little bit of a boost, but now we need action to follow up on them words, and, and I've told the minister directly, this is something I'm going to be impressing on him on every opportunity that comes forward.

On Tu- oh, today is the last day, but it's also not the last day of our Irish Times sign up com- for the Irish Times pre-round.

The Irish Times is the premier debate competition on the island of Ireland, a rhetoric style competition that the likes of, uh, Michael D. Higgins and Mary Robinson have competed in, as well as Darragh O'Brien, uh, who has won it.

So it's a really cool competition.

We're having our pre-rounds on Monday in the PFC, which is where all our stuff happens that's not in the McMourney.

And I, and I think there's confidence in the government that we're moving in the right direction.

Darragh O'Brien has been really focused on this area.

Um, we have a good set of grants.

We have the right incentives.