And why are they exempt?

Because Europe has decided that they're exempt at the moment, that they're going to do a complete European project on the loss of it.

I think it's ferociously unfair on that.

We would also have looked at those measures that we had put into the budget.

We had brought in something like 140 or 150 million in agriculture.

We wouldn't have cut the budget by 100 odd million.

We had also looked at €3,000 in tax rebates, changing the tax bands.

And what about cutbacks in the government as well? Problem solved.

What's your thoughts tonight, reaction, particularly to the four women's accounts there when it comes to suppression of appetite, managing their weight and the cascading effect, the impact this has on their families, their loved ones, the death spiralling, but also the health impacts that Alison talked about?

should say we're shocked.

One time ago, 10 or 15, 20 years ago, when you talked about cocaine, you talked about Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Galway, big towns.

It's in every pub in the country at the moment.

And let us be honest about this.

And even in the sports side of things, you'll hear them saying if they're taking it, they won't put on weight.

If you're having a feast of pints, you will put on weight.

Michael, what do you say to that? First of all,

What do you think is behind this? How much of this is about bed capacity? How much of this is delayed discharges? How much of this is that we are still not getting to grips with trolley numbers across the country?

I think there's a myriad of things.

First of all, yeah, management is one thing.

They have to have proper management.

No one denies that.

The second thing is the infrastructure.

If you look at a hospital, we'll just say some of the new hospitals in Dublin, and you look at, say, an older hospital like Galbraith Region, well, it's totally different hospitals in trying to process people and the facilities you'd have.

Michael Fitzmaurice, on that piece around GP services, community services, presumably you would like to see government massively accelerate investment in that area.

Oh, no, I

do.

And the last thing they do when they come to the house, when they're going, they give you a fish pump and they give you a hug to say good luck to you.

And to think... that we insulted the pardons, or the grandpardons.

That when couples want to go out at night, it's the grandpardons that will always mind the youngsters.

When there's no one to do the babysitting for them to go to work, it's always the grandpardons that does it.

And I think it was... a badly, badly put together initiative, that's my honest opinion, because you were targeting people that would give their lives for their grandchildren, to be quite frank about it.

The children will also be voters as well.

And you can feel the anger coming across in the text as

well.

Public housing won't cover those people.

As Pádraig rightly pointed out earlier, I don't know what the...

It's in Dublin, but in Galway it's 35,000.

In Roscommon it's 30,000.

And when you go over that, good luck, goodbye.

last year the figures don't lie these are CSO figures they're up 20% more has to be done Padraig more has to be done but let's not you know let's not mislead the public here there are inroads being made there are inroads being made and just like you I do my constituency work I bring people in and out to local authorities trying to get them loans and set up an affordable housing there are options there for people that weren't there 10 years ago and a lot of these options are working we are making inroads and As I said, we're twice the speed of other EU countries in terms of social housing provision at the moment.

Would you back

more protests? Well, the first thing that has to be done is you have to listen to what people want.

That's the first thing.

And then you have to see, does the government give that? There is room for manoeuvre for a government.

In fairness, and Pádraig's party has brought it forward.

We've talked about it.

The carbon tax...

I'm

I'll go around quickly it's chalk and cheese when you talk about this cities and smaller towns and villages Michael isn't it?

Yeah, well, there's two things here.

I feel sorry for the youth at the moment.

When I was a gossiper, when I was in my 20s, any Saturday night we had 15 places that we could go to in this, say, Mayo, Roscommon, Galway area.

You could see Smokey one time.

You could see Shake and Stevens.

All of them were coming to places.

Let me ask, finally, in the 30 seconds I have left, the only person who would be going to any nightclub on the paddle, Clare, I mean, what do you think is needed here?

Yeah, but

it was five twelfths of what you'd be using for the year.

Because our peak, anyone's peak that's an agricultural contractor, In the beginning of October, you can't put out slurry.

The fertiliser is over now.

You don't put out slurry until January.

Tractors are quieter by its nature, October, November, December.

The middle of January, they get into re-election in March and for the five months.

And to be fair to the Minister, he's very open to it.

Good morning Simon, how are you? So an amendment you said to this, you don't think it's fair?

Yeah well first of all I want to be very clear and we've made it clear in our statement we don't condone or support excessive gambling around the country in parts and also in the line of money laundering the spirit of the legislation and that there was nothing wrong with it but unfortunately we're all politicians legislation is there for everyone there are parts of it that's what we would call unintended consequences and there are many small towns or villages and there's plenty of them around myself and I'm sure there's plenty of them around Sligo where there might be one pub and a shop in an area.

And especially elderly people might go and put a few euro of a bet on within the local pub.

They're making me this handy.

with all these apps.

I'm not fond of them myself, and I'm a bit younger.

And the pub had an account with the bookie.

Are you not promoting gambling by looking for an amendment

Um, do you agree with him on anything?

Um, not a lot.

Uh, I agree with him on one thing, that, uh, people with barbecues, going by what the minister said, um, recklessly, uh, set fire because leaving the barbecues after them in certain areas.

I disagree, and I fundamentally disagree with his wording about farmers, who the environmentalists love to blame farmers.

Let's get a few things straight here.

Ireland is, should have, was, was a managed landscape right around the country.

Unfortunately, through regulation from EU, uh, designation, um, destocking, and let's start at the beginning because I think we need to go back a bit to go forward.

Yeah, finally, yeah.

Michael Fitzmaurice, where do you and your party stand on this?

Well, first of all, I think Jim McCallaghan went into a house with one door.

He didn't leave himself a back door to be able to negotiate.

He brought in something without proper negotiation.

And when you have a standoff, then it becomes problematic.

For example...

Read the papers tonight, and you'll see that 11 people went to the High Court today.

the scheme is vastly undersubscribed.

Where do you think the responsibility lies if Ireland ends up in the dock here?

But first of all, there is no winners from the likes of DCJ, or cases referred to DCJ, because it's once again, you are abusing their heavy hand.

They have made a decision yesterday, and this is, I really think that it's disturbing to see the wording of what they used.

They called it illegal.

In any point of law, whether you're driving a car or doing anything, a decision is made on something in a court.

You cannot be classed as legal or illegal.

And I think it's not good that the Commission used those words to start off with.

How is that not illegal?

Offaly, Westmead, Roscommon, Tipperary, Longford, Kildare and

Sligo.

I got a person to look at one and I have the proof of everything there.

And everything was inaccurate, what was wrote in that report.

This is the EPA report.

Yeah, it's disappointing to see the wording that the Commission used.

They've been judge and jury on this so far because they've said illegal.

Michael, what's your response to that?

Michael, your reaction to this story?

Yeah, it was one of the surprising...

It was one of surprise.

While I do know that there are certain cases in the line of someone with a television license, you'd see them being sent to jail.

And I think that's madness, to be quite frank about it.

But one of the proposals is people are selling drugs.

Now, we're all our life trying to keep people away from drugs and help them as much as possible.

That war on drugs, they've tried it everywhere and it doesn't actually work.