Holly Cairns

She hasn't done it.

So what they're doing is they're flipping over to the great white hope, which is social Democrats and Holly Cairns.

That's what's happening here.

And ultimately, though, we're going to be left in a time of relative wealth in this country.

They're not prepared to take a chance on the left yet in this country.

I do

not believe that the support for Holly Cairns will translate into votes at the next election.

I don't believe it.

OK, well, look, I mean, honestly, we could do a full hour on that, but we can't because we have to acknowledge that there are other things going on in the world as well.

And we're going to come back to Ireland now and talk about Holly Cairns has been speaking this week about the what she called a completely ridiculous scenario that surrounds TDs taking maternity leave.

Tell us a bit about this.

Yeah, so the core issue at play here is that the Oireachtas, i.e. the Joint Houses of Parliament of Ireland, don't seem to have any system in place whereby a TD or a senator can, you know, excuse themselves from work by maternity leave.

It doesn't seem to be in the system, or at least it certainly wasn't in the system in late 2024, which is when Holly Cairns first embarked on maternity leave.

But no, we know that it's still not within the system yet.

So essentially what Holly Cairns had to do, first of all, because she wasn't able to flag herself as up on maternity leave, she continued to receive some travel and accommodation allowance that's given to TDs.

That is something that she repaid as soon as she found out that there was a discrepancy there.

Also really interesting to me anyway, and educational for me as well, is a piece by Joanna Tuffy, who's a Labour councillor in Thursday's Irish Times.

And it's on foot of a couple of articles by the Irish Times' investigations unit about the claiming of expenses by members of the Oireachtas, particularly in relation to the Social Democrats leader, Holly Cairns, over the course of her maternity leave last year after the birth of her first child.

and also a Fianna Fáil senator, Imelda Goldsbrough from Tipperary, was contending with a serious illness, I think, last year as well.

And it kind of illuminated a couple of points for me that I hadn't been clear on.

They don't have to go to work.

They'll still get paid if they don't go to work.

The only point, and this was the part that really boggled my mind, is that if you want to claim the expenses for travelling to the Dáil and having to stay overnight in Dublin or whatever it might be, which I think both the Senator and Holly Cairns would need to do because they're fairly far away from Dublin, well then you have to put in a sixer.

But I'm going, but if you're putting in a sick search, by definition, you're not actually going to the toll.

He'll be along later.

two other party tds and a senator were also not present for the press conference the independent says and party leader holly cairns was absent due to illness

Good morning.

Now, party leader Holly Cairns isn't here.

She's expecting her second child in early November and received medical advice to rest at home, and we hope she and her family are doing well, but you're very welcome, deputy.

And, uh, we might start off with your call for a windfall tax on energy companies.

Push come to shove, you're going on that plane.

Whether you're Holly Cairns or Mary Lou or Richard Boyd Barrett or whatever, if they were in government, they would be made go.

Because...

It's not just Donald Trump.

Yeah.

Holly Cairns is still the most popular leader, I suppose, if you were to put it that way, on 40%.

Miho Martin on 37%.

Simon Harris on 34%.