Do you think he's right, Michael?

He's, you know, for once, um, I- I'm gonna say this, Michael Healy-Rae is right.

[laughs] Um, uh, no, in fairness to him, um, uh, it's rutting season at the moment, so September to November, uh, people are in serious danger of being hit by, uh, deer who have absolutely no road sense.

They don't startle.

They don't...

You can't alert them.

They'll do their own thing.

What did you make of this dance that we watched all week?

Michael Sheridan, to go to you, how do you think this should be managed?

It's a tricky one because Motorways are absolutely fantastic ways of moving transport and goods around the country.

They're extremely safe in the main.

All the traffic is going in one direction.

There's no right turns.

You don't go across traffic when you're on them.

There's a lovely flow to them.

i mean like on one level driving on a motorway should be easier i mean there's the nerves factor and there's clearly like observation and timing and things like that with changing lanes but they're long straight roads with very few bends it doesn't seem that logistically challenging to train people on it when it's not as tricky as some of the other roads that people will be navigating in the country like twisty back roads

How much of a game changer do you think any of those could be? And, uh, do you have any insight into what the, the barrier or the, the delay in the rollout has been heretofore?

Well, I think straight away that the resources that the guards have are stretched to the limit with the EU presidency, so [clears throat] anything that's gonna happen, uh, and any additional enforcement is, is w- we're not gonna see much of it.

We're just gonna be getting out of the way of, of the logistical, uh, pressures of, of the presidency.

Cameras and enforcement, um, enforcement is really the only way to go because we've proven, uh, collectively as drivers in Ireland that we, uh, we, we will follow the herd, we'll go with the flow of traffic.

If we see a clear road and it's dry, we'll, we'll exceed whatever limit, uh, is posted.

Frequently then we'll be on roads where there aren't limits posted.

Um, there is simply isn't enough Garda presence and enough ways to catch people, um, b- breaking the law, uh, and the, the, the road traffic acts, um, which, you know, comprehensive legislation, it's all there.

It, it- are distractions getting more common, in-car distractions from the technology itself that's being used, uh, to enhance the driver experience?

How do you mean?

As in, like, I'm a motorcyclist.

I've done thousands of kilometers in, um, in, across numerous continents.

Um, and you will have, you can make eye contact with the driver at a junction, and you will see them, them looking at you, and then you'll see them move out, because they've taken a glance in your direction, but they haven't processed that you're coming towards them.

So, uh, that, that whole thing of, it's, it's more like play a game with people in your, uh, in your car if you've got kids or if, if you're driving home.

Just count the number of motorcycles or cyclists you see, because people aren't, they're, they're, they're filling in the gaps, and they're not seeing motorcycles or, or bikes.

[laughs]

They'll be str- they'll fall straight away.

What's the solution? No pressure.

Oh, you know, you know what? There's so, um, many issues, and it causes so much problems.

I mean, the amount of man-hours lost, you know, to, to, just to commerce, people working, people missing appointments, people missing hospital appointments, flights being missed, the stress, the shortening of people's lives, the lack of time being able to spend with your family because you're stuck, um, uh, in a traffic jam.

The obvious thing was, when they built the M50 in the first place, was to have started the next outer ring road at the time.

We can't build more infrastructure because in Ireland we're incapable of doing what every other first world country can do, and that's build infrastructure and look, uh, to, to have enough supply for what's required going forward.

If this was, you know, if we got, uh, uh, China in to do this, they'd have a rail line running down the center of every motorway, they'd have cycle paths, they'd have everything all there because it'd be no surprise that people would want to use a valuable bit of infrastructure.

Um, we're part of the problem ourselves.

that-You think driver behavior is, is, is part of the congestion problem, do you?

They can't be sourced from elsewhere, so there'll be huge corporations in America thinking, "Oh my God, what do we do?"

Well, classical economists will tell you that the iPhone, the Apple phone is the illustration of the absurdity of tariffs because so many of its components are made in China, made in other sourcing countries, assembled in China, designed in California, all of those things.

How would you measure the value in a globalized supply chain? So it was almost emblematic about why this won't work in the long run.

But it's not about that.

It's about a power struggle between Trump and the Chinese leadership and between the United States and China for who is going to dominate transpacific trade in this century.

Somebody said to me over the weekend that if this trade war gets worse, just watch China and it could bring the invasion of Taiwan a little bit closer to, for th- so, so China can make a statement to the United States, "You might think that you're the all-powerful superpower here, but here's a, here's a bit of military power that we can exert."

We're ignoring all the things they've already done.

Uh, the more important thing than, uh, raising their tariffs was banning or controlling the export of sensitive rare earth minerals, which are vital to American weapons systems, including the F-35 fighter, submarines, missile guidance systems, and so on.