And look,

I'm sympathetic enough to that as well.

Like, I was kind of surprised in some ways the degree of the discourse that was focused, including on RT's Lifeline programme this week, of whether he should take it or not.

I kind of thought we'd had that debate and it had been settled.

But look, I'm kind of more interested in the politics of it and as well the polling of it, because it does show that Simon Harris is now...

Of the large parties, he's firmly the least popular leader.

Micheál Martin on 36%, Mary Lou MacDonald on 34%, Simon Harris down three points to 30%, tied with Ivana Bacik of Labour.

this storm.

–

that work continues and that people are taking work.

And both he and the Taoiseach were pointing out that those who are participating in the new scheme – continue to earn significant amounts of money.

I mean, in the six figures since it was introduced since July, some of the solicitors working in it have been.

Now, against that, you have to take the weight of testimony from the courts themselves.

So both on the solicitors and on the barrister side who say that this is having a very significant effect.

You also have to consider the downstream effects of this, which may not be immediately visible.

just explain that to me a little.

H- how, how are Jim O'Callaghan's colleagues in Cabinet, uh, feeling about this ongoing dispute?

Well, we haven't heard a huge amount directly from his Cabinet colleagues on the dispute, with the notable exception of the Taoiseach, who was asked about this on his way into Cabinet on Tuesday morning.

And he seems to be standing four square behind Jim O'Callaghan on this, backing him on his way into Cabinet, and then also providing, uh, staunch backing for him during leader's questions in the Dáil yesterday when this came up at length, several speakers bringing it up and being highly critical, both in the Dáil and on the lengths of his, his plinths beforehand.

Micheál Martin's contention is that this is fundamentally an issue of reform and also a money question.

He says that the legal services industry, uh, has been kind of impervious to reform, and anyone who remembers the, the Troika's ambitions to reform it will, will, uh, concur with that, uh, over many years, and that this is a first substantive effort to do so, and that the opposition should row in behind them on that.

What the opposition say to that is that, you know, reform is all well and good, but it has to be well managed, and they accuse Jim O'Callaghan of effectively acting nakedly politically here, that he's kind of looking for a fight as opposed to looking for a resolution and looking to extract maximum political advantage from standing up to, to solicitors, lawyers, being a, a group that is perhaps tied with politicians in a low order of preference amongst the, the public.

Uh, all of it leads to a place where the, the row has deepened, as you mentioned yourself.

But at a certain point, I suppose reality has to, uh, meet that, that, uh, intention.

Mm-hmm

... none of which is quite as serious and potentially explosive as the RTÉ one.

So our understanding is that at senior levels within government, so Taoiseach Tánaiste, and also, uh, with Jack Chambers, the sense is that this 21 million extra that they've found will address the RTÉ situation, such as it is, and they only become aware of the, the lower allocation for this year on and around, on or around budget day itself.

There's a three-year agreed funding model." Um, so what does it tell us about the relations between RTE and the government, or more specifically, the minister?

Well, not great, obviously, and Kevin Bakhurst has gone to the barricades on this one.

I mean, in the aftermath of this whole controversy kicking off, he sent a very forthright email, uh, to staff saying that this was a very serious situation.

It was gonna have very serious consequences, and, you know, let it be known publicly about this very short window that he was given in advance, uh, of, of this becoming public or of the budget being announced.

Uh, and this goes, you know, on top of several incidents of, of Patrick O'Donovan squaring off, uh, with RTE or with Kevin Bakhurst as he seeks to, he being Patrick O'Donovan, seeks to push forward this sense of the reform agenda, uh, slowing down, and him being the minister who's, who's trying to land it-

Big, huge problems, big, huge problems, presumably that are reaching the desks of our politicians.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, they wouldn't have to look very far to find political parties and political actors who are championing those kind of concerns.

And interestingly, this is something that's not just confined to Ireland.

There's no exceptionalism here.

We see this across many different jurisdictions, perhaps most acutely in the US, where I think a lot of the hostility to data centres at a local level is kind of thrown into this grab bag of, economic and cultural concerns about being marginalized and left behind.

And all of a sudden you have a big kind of example of a data center coming into town and gobbling up all these resources.

So is there a sense in, you know, Leinster House that this sort of political toxicity that's now been attached to data centres locally, that that will percolate up?

So what's going to be on the agenda? What's he going to talk to the Taoiseach about and what and vice versa? And what is our president going to say to him?

Well, I mean, this is an issue that political figures have been asked here in Ireland over the last couple of days.

This is an issue that political figures in Ireland have been asked over the last couple of days.

There's unlikely to be a kind of sit-down, fireside chat... press conference the way there is in the Oval Office when Micheál Martin visits.

But he was asked at the Fianna Fáil think-in earlier on this week, you know, what exactly will you be raising? And both him and other senior figures within government have been given the impression that Ireland will be raising the things that it thinks are important.

You'd have to think that a goal of greater stability in the world, cessation or downgrading of the intensity of the conflict with Iran and an associated loosening of the trade restraints and conditions that are currently in place in the Straits of Hormuz, that would be a big topic.

And then perhaps the more interesting part is how Catherine Connolly, the president... is going to handle this.

Is that what happened? Is that what happens now? Is that is that a style?

What's that earmarked for? What should that be spent on?

Well, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things, really, that 620 million funds.

And it should be said as well that this is just one annual slice of a much bigger allocation that's supposed to spin out over the coming years through the National Development Plan.

Because as we know, there's a huge environmental and political, indeed, emphasis on the whole thing, the whole programme of retrofitting, which is supposed to retrofit hundreds of thousands of homes up and down the country.

So there's an overall budget out to 2030 in the region of 3.7 billion for residential energy efficiency.

And that is funneled through programs like the like the warmer home scheme, which is something that people may be familiar with.

That's a scheme that targets the oldest and least energy efficient homes.

What has he said?

And there's one story that really, um, permeates all the papers, and that's the, the ongoing fallout from the M9, uh, tragedy.

Yeah, and perhaps unsurprisingly, given the scale of what happened on the M9 just a week ago, that we're still seeing kind of blanket coverage across all the Sunday papers.

Um, but we are also still seeing some new developments, and there's a couple of stories that I'd point to in particular, which are kind of building out a fuller picture, not only of what happened, and there are very good long read narratives around what happened in the newspapers today, but also about some of the kind of extraneous factors and other, other things that we need to be thinking about and looking about, looking at when it comes to this.

One in particular is, um, Wayne O'Connor's piece in The Sunday Independent.

He's been talking to people who seem to have worked in TikTok, and we know that TikTok and social media, and the effect that that has on the proliferation and sharing of content of illegal and dangerous activity, has been central to the discussion after this.

So he's been talking to people who worked in TikTok in Dublin, who basically say that the company was standing down or lessening the degree of investment or resources they were allocating to content moderation.

So people would, would develop kind of expert sets of skills when it came to looking at particular types of content, so things like dangerous driving, and they were being spread more thinly, being asked to keep their eye on various other pieces of content or decommissioned over time.

He was a lost boy."

They want more, the people, uh, generally want more, uh, stricter regulation of big tech.

They want stricter regulation of big tech, but if you look at that, that, that question around would you favor expansion of the EU if you had to pay more for it, independent voters more staunchly oppose.

62% of them say no. That's a, that's a nearly two-thirds majority, and also I think those amongst lower income, uh, deciles as well.

So again, is, is there this cohort, is there this segment of the Irish electorate in some, in some moods it's urban, or in some ways, excuse me, it's, it's rural, uh, lower income, independent leaning, you know, not represented, feeling not represented by mainstream politics? And is that kind of skepticism of the EU project or the current direction traveled in the EU, is it, is, will that find, um, a more, a, a, a proven ground amongst those, those voters?

Miscarry or indeed have an abortion

... miscarry, uh, before 23 weeks of pregnancy.

And interestingly, it would a- apply to those who, uh, have a termination, um, before 12 weeks and in some limited circumstances, a- after 12 weeks.

Um, so look, this is obviously a, uh, a policy direction that, uh, that the government is interested in.

Maybe just paint us a picture of Dublin Central.

Yeah.

Well, mean, gritty streets to, to leafy suburban avenues.

It takes it all in.

It is, uh, it, it's a relatively small geographic constituency, but it's one that kind of looms large in the, the political and public imagination of the country.

It's got a lot of, a lot of landmarks, going from O'Connell Street, and the Spire, and the GPO, out to Croke Park, which people from up and down the country will, of course, know from various visitations.

Uh, it's also a big political arena where we've seen some enormous careers come and go down the years, none perhaps larger than that of, of Bertie Ahern, but also taking in the Tony Gregory organization and his, uh, multi-decade career in Leinster House, and more recently, the careers of Mary Lou McDonald and Paschal Donohoe, whose departure for pastures new in the World Bank set off this by-election, which is going to be held a week and a half from today.

And the alternative, if they don't win it, if the, as some people have already s- said, if it's Mary Lou's to lose, and she does lose, what does that mean for, for Sinn Féin?

There's a question of whether Hutch is going to run.

There's a question of, yeah, uh, as, as I understand, as of this morning, another podcast was discussing the possibility that he may or may not make it onto the ballot.

I suppose we'll, we'll find that out soon enough.

But, you know, the, the kind of Exocet missile into the side of, of Irish politics that was Gerry Hutch's performance in the general election and the incredible reeling in of his lead, um, by Marie Sherlock in the RDS over the course of that count was kind of one of the stories of that election.

I mean, he is on apparently a, a big voter registration drive trying to activate parts of the electorate that would traditionally stay at home, uh, emphasizing his, his local credentials, as you might expect he would.

I'm, I'm still dubious as to whether he can build up anything like sufficient numbers of, uh, first preferences in order to, to stay ahead and combat his own proven transfer toxicity from the general election, unless that is a trend, that transfer toxicity is a trend which reverses itself, that he would come into, that he would come into contention for the seat.

Uh, he may pick up some transfers from Steenson when he goes out, being another anti-establishment candidate.

Do you think there's any argument at all for looking again at carbon taxes and the way that they operate?