I was interested in your piece, though, that you didn't just look at where restrictions are taking place, but where there's also incentives taking place, like in Belgium.

Yeah, so Belgium, you know, because part of this problem is kind of the Airbnb side of it.

But the other problem is, you know, when it comes to the housing market, is just how many properties are left sitting vacant or somebody might have bought a second property as either an investment or a bit of a bolt hole in a city.

And it's really sitting there unused in an area where housing is in high demand.

So, for example, in...

In Brussels, you know, if you're buying a property, you get pretty decent tax breaks on the equivalent of a stamp duty as long as you live in it afterwards for at least five years.

And so what that basically does is it stops...

Like some of these can be quite high end as well.

So, you know, is Ursula von der Leyen suggesting something that actually is not likely to happen in the near future?

That's a great point on CETA.

You know, it was provisionally passed in 2017.

And at the time, there was a whole host of fears and terror in the Irish farming community.

The IFA and others were very vocally against it, saying this will have a hugely detrimental impact.

It came into effect and the sky didn't fall in.

In fact, Irish exporters and agriculture do a fairly tidy bit of business selling to Canada.

So is there a sense, you know, from the EU's point of view that it's already nearly a done deal?

So has this lack of an EU Act been the barrier for countries who want to do more on this?

Well, what we've seen is when countries or cities go ahead with these restrictions and regulations, like in Barcelona, they're often challenged in the courts by the short-term letting industry.

And one of the arguments that's made by the industry is that this falls foul of what's called the EU Services Directive, which is basically a law that sets and governs how companies can freely offer services across the EU.

And what the commission are doing with this new piece of proposed regulation is kind of taking that argument off the table and saying, no, this this is kosher with you can go ahead and regulate or restrict Airbnb and short term lets.

And I suppose that'll be seen as something to give a bit of comfort to places that have already introduced regulations and maybe encourage others who are on the fence about it but were worried about being dragged to court and ending up in a costly battle with Airbnb or others.

In short, Jack, where's that going to leave people who are going to be travelling around Europe and looking for affordable or cheaper accommodation then?

Yeah, well, this is the kind of the crux of it.

And I think, you know, Airbnb and the rest were great for those maybe cheaper trips and city breaks.

Is it a case, I'm always confused about this, is it a case that the president or the government on the president's behalf invited President Trump to meet President Connolly or did President Trump say, I want to pop in and see Catherine Connolly?

Well, the kind of exact planning of these things is always kept quite under wraps, you know, in terms of diplomatic protocol and things like that.

But, you know, we know the main visit for Trump's, the main reason for his visit to Ireland isn't to meet Catherine Connolly or Amita Martin.

It's to go and watch the golf down in Doonbeg, the Irish Open, that's being hosted in his golf course down in Clare.

But you know, the fact that he's coming and, you know, I think that Taoiseach on other occasions had kind of invited him to Ireland.

So, I mean, the fact that he's coming to watch the Gulf, the political and diplomatic engagements, I suppose, were really tagged on afterwards.

You know, we... we had some kind of gist of what the schedule would look like, although there was some uncertainty over whether it would include a trip to the Auris.

he could have flown directly to Shannon and straight to the golf course, but he did instead choose to fly to Dublin to meet with the president and the Taoiseach.

Jack, who is he, and why did Zelensky fire him?

So Fedorov has been the defense minister in Ukraine for the last while.

He's 35 years of age, so he's, he's quite young.

He's come to be seen and kind of typify this embracing of drone warfare on the battlefield.

He was kind of an early adopter and backer of it that, you know, in the east, the fighting is done in trenches, almost World War I-esque trenches, where the Russians and Ukrainians are dug down, and in between them, there's a no man's land.

But unlike World War I, where a lot of the, the shelling and incoming fire would've been artillery rounds, in the Ukrainian war, the battlefield is effectively won and, and lost by drones and competing drones buzzing in the sky, hunting for an exposed crop of troops or exposed position on the other side.

And, and Fedorov really, as I said, embraced this and wanted to double down on that.

People of Limerick, I'm sure, will really, really want to know the timeframe of that, because that could really impact on lives here.

Jack, will we talk first of all about this report into Aughinish Alumina? What has the Taoiseach been saying?

Yeah, we got the clearest indication to date of the findings of that report.

The Taoiseach effectively said that while there was no definitive evidence that the material produced in Aughinish was ending up in the military industrial complex and in arms manufacturers in Russia, there wasn't also, um, I suppose, evidence to conclude that that wasn't happening.

So, the Taoiseach effectively saying that it's very difficult to say for certain either way with, um, with a degree of confidence.

Now, interestingly, obviously this takes place against the backdrop of, um, debate around EU sanctions.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy made the case again today, standing beside the Taoiseach, that Ukraine would like to see alumina sanctioned at EU level, and that would effectively mean that Aughinish would no longer be able to export it to Russia.

The Taoiseach interestingly said that w- this will obviously be discussed with the European Commission in, in, in Brussels to decide what to do now, but that there may be ways to explore, um, other avenues, he said, to make sure that material wasn't going to Russia from Aughinish, indicating that something separate to, um, including it in the next round of EU sanctions.

But as you say, extra sanctions have been announced by the EU today, just not on alumina.

Leyen, that proposes

the various different rounds and successive rounds of economic sanctions targeting Russia.

And then it's the 27 national governments that basically approve those sanctions.

So the Parliament's decision today to support a motion effectively calling for sanctions on Irish alumina is, as you said, a bit of a symbolic move.

But it is one that will ramp up the pressure on Brussels when it comes to sanctions.

thinking of how and what it will include in the next round of sanctions.

And I mean, Illumina is really in the crosshairs, on the back of all the reporting, you know, in the Irish Times and other media outlets of the county limerick plant's downstream role, I suppose, in really supplying and exporting this critical raw material to Russia, leading to significant concerns that that raw material is ending up supplying the Russian military complex and going into the likes of weapons and missiles that end up being launched at Ukraine.

Do we have any idea when we're likely to see the fruits of the inquiry?

... housing.

Housing, yeah.

Yeah, no, it's, uh, it, it is, uh, a kind of a new arrival, uh, on the EU scene, because, um, you know, housing has not traditionally been an EU competence.

Uh, but clearly the impact of the housing crisis is being felt acutely in political systems across Europe.

Uh, it has fed a lot of frustration, and perhaps a drift to more radical, populist parties, uh, who are people just looking for solutions, looking for a roof over their heads.

This is no longer unique to Ireland.

It's a massive issue in the Netherlands, in Spain.

What about you, Jack? What else sort of stands out, either about today or what's the thing that you're looking towards with interest over the coming six months?

Does it actually matter?

Well, whoever's hosting it certainly gets excited about it.

I'm not sure if everyone else to the same extent.

I mean, it is an important role.

And maybe just to explain that a little bit to people.

So it's basically Ireland is taking over the presidency of the Council of the EU, which in the EU system represents the interests of the national governments and member states.

And so what that will mean in practice is Ireland will chair or Irish ministers or diplomats will chair meetings happening in Brussels most of the time where they trash out all the various different policy decisions that move through the EU policymaking machine.

Likewise, our paltry investment in defence by comparison to other European member states are the kind of things that I would have thought are difficult discussions for us to have a strong position in.

It sounds like they're having a referendum to have a referendum.

A little bit, yeah, because there will be another vote if this one goes ahead and they say, OK, grand, let's kick off back where we started, talking with Brussels officials about the various different lengthy and winding negotiations that go into joining the EU bloc.

And then after all that, the Icelandic government would effectively present whatever deal they'd got back to the people to say, OK, now here is...

What we have on the table? Should we become members of the European Union? And that negotiation process, as I said, because they're already quite aligned, could be pretty quick.

But there's some very big sticking points.

As you said, the experience of the financial crash will probably still resonate with people.

But the real big one is fish and fishery.

But How has that conversation shaped the role of Greenland, both within the territory of Denmark, but within the Nordic community in general?

And was there a sense of relief, do you think, last night that those threats have been de-escalated?

Yeah, certainly.

I mean, it was half emergency so much, probably half group therapy session at that point in terms of trying to navigate the Trump administration, and we're only one of four years in, I think there was a broad sense that the EU's strategy, there was a bit of back patting that the EU's strategy of, I suppose, trying to remain calm, but also clearly signalling that the Union was prepared for a strong enough response if Trump followed through on his threats.

And that response would have included initially counter tariffs on US trade.

And that's something that Ursula von der Leyen and other leaders kind of felt that had made Trump back down or think twice that it seemed and Europe projected a sense that it was ready for a bit of a fight on this one.

What do we expect to happen over the coming days? Obviously, a tripartite meeting set up for the UAE.

And this is one of the things that really loomed in the background of the Greenland crisis is that Europe is still, and Ukraine is still so heavily reliant on US support of military intelligence in Ukraine that you know, the Greenland crisis risks spilling over into that other sphere where, you know, they have to try and keep Trump on side and prevent him, you know, throwing his toys out of the pram and walking away from Ukraine.

And, you know, that was, I think, one of the concerns in the back of leaders' minds.

Do you think that the pressure became too much for him?

I don't think we were at that point.

The EU and EU leaders are meeting for an emergency or what was an emergency summit in Brussels later this evening.

The sense of crisis has abated a little bit, but they were shaping up, you know, to take... a tougher stance than they had before.

So maybe Trump read the room and said, it looks like these guys are, you know, going to be a bit firmer this time than they were last year.

And maybe he didn't have quite the appetite for, you know, an escalating tit for tat tariff scrap that blows up potentially into a trade war.

And he just, he just backed down.

Does that effectively put Mercosur into abeyance for a couple of years or what implications will it have for Mercosur?

Jack, just talk us through, I suppose, firstly, what happened at yesterday's meeting and where Europe is at in terms of responding to this threat from Donald Trump.

Yeah, good morning from Brussels.

You know, from the fallout of the Beckham family to the fallout and breakup of the transatlantic relationship that Ireland's economy entirely depends on.

You know, what we're seeing at the moment is a really frantic push from European leaders within the EU, but also the UK, NATO, to try and get Trump to back down from his demands that the US must either buy or seize by military force Greenland, the Danish territory in the Arctic, and that if he doesn't get his way, he's going to levy further tariffs on Denmark, a whole host of other European countries.

So this was obviously discussed on the sidelines of a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels yesterday.

You know, it's being discussed in practically every forum today.

that there is over in Brussels and in national capitals and between national capitals.