And I believe it fell to you, am I right in saying it fell to you to break the news to your colleagues?

Well, it did in a way in that I arrived in the office this morning and the RTE news was just breaking and I sat down at my desk, opened my emails and then was like, oh, lads, we might have a problem here too.

So very quickly then, obviously, there are no more than has happened here in RTE.

There's protocols around that and you're hitting the break glass in case of emergency button clearing the building and And everyone's out into into Talbot Street and all the rest.

So it's a surreal thing.

I mean, I don't want to say or pretend that people were panicking.

We've all seen what's happened over the last few days.

And now this.

Are there any typos? Maybe that's a journalist chatting to a journalist.

What's it like? The subject line is a message to the West.

And it starts out with this guy, Mikhail Andropov, which is a bit of a stereotypical Russian type of name, I would think, claiming responsibility or at least to be part of this group that has caused the chaos across Europe over the last few days.

And he kind of sets out why he's done this.

And it's basically European authorities have once again shown that they're incompetent fools.

So it's not very formal, if you like, it's using that kind of everyday common man language.

So they're incompetent fools who are incapable of doing anything to stop us.

So we were evacuated from the building and then you were in communication with the guards.

Yeah, what we're seeing really is...

Look, we're a long way from a general election.

I think that any polls we do over the next year, it's probably worth framing in the concept that people aren't really thinking about how can I change a government? But what we are seeing is Sinn Féin are kind of on 22%, which is largely where they have been now for quite some time.

They're stagnant, is the truth.

Fine Gael down three points to 15, Fianna Fáil up one point to 15.

So like the only consolation there for Micheál Martin is that Simon Harris has now joined him in that lowly place.

And after that, the SOC Dems have made, you know, gains from where the last election, Independent Ireland and Aintoo combined on 16%, which is, you know, they're a little bit more to the right and often protest vote goes to the left.

And you and I are both... we have an earworm, a tune that's ringing around in our heads.

But I would put it back to

you.

I know, I'm not saying teachers don't deserve a pay rise and all that, but there will be an awful lot of people and an awful lot of low income workers or an awful lot of people, say, in accountancy or jobs that were once very secure, very well paid jobs, now looking at the AI revolution, how far that's come in 12 months and worrying, will they have a job in 12 or 24 months? And then they're looking at people who want to shut down parts of the country in order to get pay rises that keep entirely with inflation but have very secure jobs and very good pensions and it's going to open up this whole debate and actually become quite divisive very quickly because even though we're at full employment for several years now and I think Simon Harris said in his budget speech that it was a phenomenon which I don't think I've ever heard a finance minister describe his management of the country as a phenomenon before but I think there's an awful lot of people who feel insecure despite that phenomenon.

At

How do successive budgets overlook a situation like that when a child is known to have a disability the day they're born and there's 18 years to plan for what happens to their care in adulthood? I

have to say that that was hard listening on a Friday evening.

Like your heart would break for that poor man to come on the radio and say that you hope that your child dies before you.

I mean, that's extraordinary that he has the courage to say it, but that he feels he has to say it so that people maybe like us, I don't know all of your circumstances, but so that we understand just how bad that situation is.

Very good morning to you.

Morning, David.

Yeah, it was quite remarkable.

Obviously, in a newsroom, you do lots of planning for a big visit like this that you know is going to dominate the headlines.

But I can tell you, when we sat down last week and tried to go through the various topics, nobody suggested that we should have an explainer ready on the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement and how we might get an American president backing the United Ireland and kind of abandoning generations of neutrality and careful speak on that particular topic but that became the story not just here in Ireland but in America and around Europe as well it was something quite extraordinary

probably this United Ireland stuff, is it coming from actually his issues with the relationship with Great Britain rather than anything specific in Ireland, or is he a real United Irelander?

Well, I mean, some of the jokes around it, David, have been quite good, you know, that we always thought he was orange or we knew he was Republican but never realised he was that type of Republican.

So it is getting a bit of humour up, but there is no doubt that the reaction particularly uh among unionists and those who believe in the united kingdom has been they've been shocked by it um everybody is kind of saying look it's trump he says things he wants to get headlined but some of his most ardent supporters on this island and indeed in london would have come from that side of the the defense they would have believed that he believed in the united states of america and that he would also believe in the united kingdom and would kind of side with them in this type of a row obviously he's gone in the complete other direction how much thought or strategy is behind that i'm not entirely sure and we may have been used a little bit but i think people are generally okay with that in the sense that he gets to butter up his house you know there is a majority in the republic at least in favor of united ireland and certainly People liked the idea, whatever we get into the economy of it and the problems and the symbolism of all of that.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, when these big events are coming, obviously, we do lots of planning in the newsroom, and you talk about what might be the news lines that emerge, what angles should you come at it from.

Last week, we were doing all that for Trump.

Nobody, nobody said, "Do you know what we need to have ready, lads? An explainer on partition and the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, just in case he decides to blow that up." Um, I mean, in terms of a controversy, the government could not be happier that this is the one that he, he chose to go with, and then at the end, he tosses out, uh, nearly half a billion worth of goodies by way of, "I'll cut that tariff-free issue, 'cause they're all going on about it.

Sure, that's a bit of craic." So, I mean, everybody got something out of this.

You, you...

Trump got his family holiday at the golf, and he seemed to enjoy himself by the, certainly that's the look of it.

[laughs]

Kevin, how did we get from uncertainty over whether Catherine Connolly would meet Donald Trump at all to him being welcomed at Orison Ucturon?

Well, how indeed, Will.

There are protocols around all of these things.

And we've known, I suppose, for a little while that Donald Trump is coming and likely coming for two days, which seems to be what's been firmed up now.

And within that, the White House and the Department of Foreign Affairs would have been working to put together an itinerary for him.

And obviously, there was all sorts of questions like, would the doll be recalled so that he could address the doll in the same way that Joe Biden did? Would the tea shop maybe go to the golf and dune bag or would they do something in Dublin? And it now seems to be crystallising around the idea that he will come to Dublin.

There was some speculation he might just fly into Shannon and stay in Doonbeg in his hotel for the entire weekend.

Do we have any indication yet how much all of this will cost the Irish taxpayer?

What do we know about him?

Yeah, this is a 17-year-old guy.

He's Kamal Pa- Paczewski, who is from Limerick, and what has emerged through the reporting of Robin Schiller and Ken Foy in The Irish Independent is that he was very well known to Gardaí, and that Gardaí consider him the, the leader of the pack, if you like.

Now, as I say, he was based in Limerick, but he had appeared in court In relation to separate charges, i- kind of in the similar space, multiple charges for being a passenger in a stolen vehicle and other matters like that, and he was actually out on bail when the M9 crash happened.

And strikingly, one of the bail conditions was that he was not to leave Limerick.

So that adds another layer, I think, to the debate that has been taking place over the last few days about the juvenile court system, how teenagers like this, who end up in a lot of trouble a lot of the time, are dealt with.

And for example, one of the things that Gardai were looking at, at this particular individual for was his arrest in relation to being part of a gang that stole a car in County Monaghan, and after that theft, the gang traveled to a rural location, and they stole a wallet, and this is kind of symptomatic of what was going on here, these type of things.

Mm.

Off on holiday, one presumes.

One presumes.

And, uh, they met a car coming the opposite direction on the motorway, so the way it shouldn't have been going, um, going southbound.

Um, we don't know exactly how many people were in that car, but we understand that multiple occupants of that car have been killed and, and I'm sure Gardai will release more details of that later.

But this all happened near Castledermot, County Kildare on the M9 around 3:00 AM this morning.

Um, so that road is obviously closed.

There's a massive investigation.

Mm-hmm.

Kevin Doyle, what's your take on it?

I think the politics, Shane, of this is fascinating because Jim O'Callaghan has clearly picked a fight.

He has decided to take on this battle.

And he's not really an ordinary minister in the sense that he knows the inner workings of this particular profession because this is where he worked full-time right up pretty much until he became a minister.

it's not like a teacher who becomes the health minister and their only real experience of the health service is a trip to A&E that it might have made once.

Jim O'Callaghan did this day in, day out.

So he obviously knew the talk around the courts and how this system was being used and decided it was something to go after.

OK, Kevin, watching from afar, what's your read on Donald Trump and how his first 18 months have gone?

The guard, the commissioner saying he'd back it, and it seems to be gaining a bit of momentum.

There's no doubt it's gaining momentum, and I think the thing is, Colm, it has moved from nuisance to hazard.

Um, in the last year, and I work in the city center every day, it, it, which is probably, it's urban areas predominantly where this is a problem.

They are everywhere, and they are lethal, to the point now where you come out of our office on Talbot Street, you literally have to look up and down the street to make sure you're not going to get knocked down by an e-scooter.

Um, they are so prevalent in the city center, and it is complete lawlessness.

... to other matters.

Well, one thing people might miss is, is the actually the breadth of audience she had, because Fiona mentioned Casualty there, which was obviously your, your nightly TV or whatever, but then every- most people think My Left Foot.

But I was saying to the guys in the office there, "I bet you if I go on the American news sites, it's going to say Pigeon Lady has died." And sure enough, top story on TMZ this afternoon is Pigeon Lady from Home Alone 2 has died, and the story with all the pictures of Brenda Fricker.

Are there any particular projects that stand out as turning points in your

career? There are several actually.

The first 15 years or so of my professional life was all in the theatre.

And I think I got into the Royal Shakespeare Company when I was in my mid-twenties, and that was an enormous turning point.

So I spent seven or eight years there, on and off, doing mostly Shakespeare and continual employment, which was just fantastic.

And what becomes apparent as you progress in your career is how important networking is.

And you're working with directors, different directors all the time.

How do you approach preparing for a role, whether it's stage or screen? Are you a preparer or are you someone who can turn up with the script?

Um, starting out in Lincolnshire, did you feel a career in acting was possible?

No. No. Um, as I said earlier, I was sort of 17, 18 years old when I was here, and, um, I didn't have a clue as to what I was gonna do.

And, um, some teachers, uh, some teachers were very kind and supportive.

I mean, none of this was here.

You know, we didn't have sort of facilities like, you know, theaters and, uh, uh, w- we did plays in the, in the dining hall, and the geography teacher sort of did the lights, and the English teacher directed the plays, and, you know, all in their own time.

They weren't getting paid for it.

Um, I still find that remarkable actually, that they were prepared to sort of...

And they would do more

the executive producer and he was saying this is extraordinary because normally after the first episode is screened numbers begin to sort of drop a little bit but But in Downton's case, it was the reverse.

Numbers were going up every week.

And that was not unprecedented, but uncommon.

And so we kind of knew that we were at least going to get another series out of it.

And so that was great.

And that's all everybody was thinking about.

It was a global phenomenon and what was it like joining that world and bringing your character to life in such a beloved ensemble, shall we say?

Well, it was a nuisance actually to start off with because I was busy doing a play at the National Theatre and we were just about to open and my agent rang and said, oh, there's this thing called Something Abbey, maybe one or two episodes, would you like to go in for it? Well, you know, I'm about to you know, my head's on this on this play and I He says go go on it, you know be bit of money so I managed to sort of wangle a couple of hours off rehearsals and I went in and And I was sat in a room with three or four other blokes and I looked at them and I thought, well, he's perfect for this part, absolutely perfect.

So that took the pressure off.

So I went in not expecting anything at all.

There were no expectations about that show at all, really.

Nobody imagined its success, not even the producers.

I think they hoped for two or three series.

Yeah, and Kevin, just in terms of England, in terms of changes, if they were to beat Ghana, and Ghana didn't look great against Panama, albeit they won, but is momentum more important than making changes in that final group game when they do meet Panama?

I was looking at the thing yesterday.

England actually played or were organising a behind-closed-doors friendly for every player that didn't play the other night, the day after the game, which is the first time I've heard something like that, a proper behind-closed-doors game against one of the MLS teams, seemingly.

He got a lot of subs on as well.

He's keeping people happy.

The subs who come on score, like Rashford sitting on the bench, comes on score, he's happy.

You're trying to keep everyone a little bit on your side.

But that's going to be a big thing to have to try and live up to.

So, Kevin, there seems to be little appetite

for a heave.

I think we're in the debt by a thousand cuts phase though, Paul, if we're honest about it.

If we go back to the presidential election, which was a disaster for Fianna Fáil last October, ever since that, there has been endless talk about Micheál Martin's leadership.

And the EU presidency, which Ireland takes over in a few weeks' time, is basically the shield that is stopping him from being ousted.

So I think once we get into the new year, that's over with.

I think at that point, the backbenches won't be able to be held back much longer.

Has that coalition of the left evaporated?

In her own constituency, after all.

The first thing is it's her own constituency.

And look, by-elections, we have probably two, you couldn't probably find two more diverse constituencies to have by-elections in.

So while generally by-elections can be quite a local thing and they don't represent national, we've got one here in the inner city of Dublin and we've got one in the Gaeltacht, out as far west.

as you can go.

So it is in a weird way a snapshot, if you like, of where the country is at.

And the trend really from a Sinn Féin perspective is that they have done badly in both.

Looking to the Green Party, Janet Horner, regular appear on programmes here, a very good performer too, didn't quite get the kind of vote maybe, but she did OK. Oh, I think the Green

Beforehand, who's doing it so far? Who in our region is doing a good job?

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