If the US was to effectively completely withdraw support for Ukraine, monetarily, politically, can Europe financially afford to pick up the tab and defend Ukraine by itself?

I think Europe would have to, but not indefinitely.

Europe's fiscal crisis, we've done it for France before the break, and other countries run deficits too.

But countries in Eastern Europe are very keen not to see Russian expansion continue.

And I think there'd be enough solidarity there, I think, amongst those countries to try and get something together.

There's different parts to the support.

You have things like intelligence and all of that, but actually European intelligence does a lot of what Ukraine needs in there.

In other countries where they're a little more hard up, these are real bread and butter decisions for governments.

Uh, and obviously we did increase, and I, I was reading that in your piece as well, that we did increase, uh, capitation to both primary and post-primary schools this year, and yet we still see our public sector workers picketing our schools.

Yes, we do, and I, I think there's a ...

Well, look, I mean, i- it's, it's always, the, the unions have, have a strict mandate, which is to focus on the pay side, and then there's the other f- funding areas, which is your capitation grant, capital spenda- spending, all that kind of stuff is, is treated a, a, a bit separately.

Um, I think what the unions will have to, to wake up to here is that as much as they are flirting with the, kinda the, the on-the-streets approach that we see in France and, and which, what the, the fuel protesters did, I worry about the, the, the, from, from their [laughs] point of view, the government's reaction function here.

Because i- i- you might think that because the government gave big to the fuel protesters, that they will give big to the unions, but actually, I think there's a risk then that if you have, like, the reeling in the years for 2026, when we play it back in 10 years' time, if the lesson is, "Too big on the street protests," and that would, would give th- those groups what they want, then who's the next group that's gonna emerge? Like, you could have all different kinds of groups emerging, saying, "I want this, I want that." And the government, because they end up on, on the streets in a big way, just caves.

And I think the government is actually gonna want to be a little more, um, tighter with this, and they may, may even end up giving more had, had there not been a strike, versus what we may end up with now, um, if there are talks-

The unions are broadly correct that pay increases have lagged behind inflation in recent years, although the gap begins to vanish when you compare it with the years before COVID." What did you mean by that?

Yeah.

What would you say to that?

Yeah, so I think, look, what Mamdani's gonna do, he's gonna spend $70 million, um, opening these five stores, but he runs a budget in, in this city of, of 6.4 billion, and he's gonna be asking other departments, uh, in his city, like, like transport and, and refuse, and, and, and that to be taking cutbacks at a time when he expands yet another government program.

And I think this is the, the problem here.

Governments have finite, uh, attention spans.

We have infrastructure problems in Ireland.

Yes, we have issues of, of poverty, and they have different ways of being, being addressed.

But opening separate supermarkets, even on a pilot basis, I think is doomed to, to failure.

Would you accept that, and that more should be done to help those families?

I, I think when everyone's, uh, uh, struggling to pay the bills, this is, uh, you could see how this would be a, an extremely popular idea.

For sure, and I'll under- you know, I'll have to begin by understanding that people are hurting with high grocery prices.

In Ireland's case, since 2020, we've seen a 27% rise in the, just the prices that people have seen at the supermarket.

Now, wages have risen in line with that, but it has risen faster on, on the food side.

Now, the problem with what Mamdani is, is proposing is that I don't think it's gonna produce any savings in the round, simply because he is using taxpayer money to produce a 30% saving in those particular stores.

So the idea is that the state runs them, keeps a discount on basic goods, all other goods are sold at the market price, and then, um, there's, there's, you know, there's a saving for, for people there.

But, you know, people are also taxpayers, and the subsidy that he's gonna have to put in, I think it's about $70 million he's gonna do there, that's adding to a big deficit that New York City already has.

It's not, it doesn't sound like he's gonna take, gonna take on the multiples or anything like that.

I think when everyone's struggling to pay the bills, you could see how this would be an extremely popular idea.

For sure.

And I'll have to begin by understanding that people are hurting with high grocery prices.

In Ireland's case, since 2020, we've seen a 27% rise in just the prices that people have seen at the supermarket.

Now, waiters have risen in line with that, but it has risen faster on the food side.

Now, the problem with what Mandani is proposing is that I don't think it's going to produce any savings in the round simply because he is using taxpayer money to produce a 30 percent saving in those particular stores.

So the idea is that the state runs them, keeps a discount on basic goods.

It's not, it doesn't sound like he's going to take on the multiples or anything like that.

Hmm.

They've always been the center-right bloc.

They've been willing to talk about their, quote, "Christian democratic roots." Um, and you know, most, most of these parties wouldn't have, you know, fairly religious people in them nowadays, but realizing your, your Christian democratic roots is, I think, and it, I think it's a good set of values because it talks about things like a social market economy, right? So that's not laissez-faire capitalism.

It's not, um, socialism either.

It's about a middle way that realizes that if you want to have social justice, you need to have a capitalist economy to fund that, but doesn't mean that you don't believe in either of those things.

It's about kind of making the two work harmoniously, uh, together.

It's also about an idea called subsidiarity.

Yeah.

And there also seems to be somewhat cultural factors in there and family history factors rather than, you know, and would think individually about each issue rather than where they are on a spectrum.

Yeah, I think that's all true.

That's certainly how politics has gone.

And that's how both parties, certainly in many elections gone by, haven't, you know, haven't been lacking without kind of a bigger label around them.

And I think they're reluctant to use them because The risk is you might get associated with like, you know, Trump or Brexit or any kind of like centre-right or right-wing stuff that's gone on in other countries.

And I think for that reason, there's a bit of that reluctance too.

But part of the reason I'm making this pitch is that my own party, Fine Gael, is going through a bit of a, you know, a kind of a bit of searching on what Fine Gael's values are.

Who's Fianna Fáil? What European group is Fianna Fáil a member of?

And why is the grandparenthood in decline significant?

It's significant because there's great research out there on the kind of bonds that parents form with their children.

But what's lesser appreciated is that there is a great bond that gets formed between grandparents and those grandkids.

And when research has been done into this area, you find all kinds of benefits like really just this release of oxytocin.

in the grandparents themselves interacting with their grandkids.

It's associated with higher life expectancy, with lower incidence of other medical problems.

Even just increased levels of laughter could be observed in the research that's out there.

Yeah, no,