Did we get any word of how things went today?

Not so far, Shane.

We got a bit of a readout from the union leaders when they came out of the talks yesterday evening.

Sounded reasonably positive.

Kevin Calnan, who is the head of impact and also the chair of impact.

ICTU's Public Services Committee, he was saying that he was pleased with the level of engagement and he got the sense from the government side, represented by officials from the Department of Public Expenditure, that they got the urgency, they understood the urgency of the situation.

And he said at that stage that he thought it was possible that a deal could be conducted relatively quickly.

Do you think there's the remotest possibility of that happening?

Pat, he's kind of poking the bear there because that has been one of the main points of contention with unions saying, you can park your productivity, let's talk pay.

I think I thought he was trying to avoid poking the Michael O'Leary bear yesterday, to be honest, in his comments after his speech at Bowdoin Town.

Bowdoin Town can't kill dare.

I mean, I think that, you know, any.

one from the government side is going to talk about productivity, they're going to talk about affordability, just as unions are going to talk about pay before they go in.

But if you look at the statement that kind of unlocked the agreed statement between negotiators on both sides that was issued on Saturday and which kind of unlocked the path for these talks to go ahead today, it did say that pay was going to be dealt with first.

But I think the nature of these things is that everything, and I think Kevin Calnan, the union leader, acknowledged this at the end of last week, is that nothing is really agreed until everything is agreed.

What's your sense on that? Or is it totally unpredictable at this point?

Uh, just bring us up to speed on what exactly has happened so far, Pat.

Hi, Shane.

Um, yeah, just two statements issued in what was clearly a coordinated move.

Statement by the government saying that it would enter what it called a focused and intensive exercise with the, uh, trade unions in, I suppose, as a bid to agree, um, a, a basis for formal negotiations on a new deal.

Around the same time, the Public Services Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said the following discussions with the government, that it had agreed to suspend the strike action that was due to take place next Wednesday.

Um, I, I, I gather that the, the kind of talks about talks, which is what the process is, I suppose, is gonna begin tomorrow.

Um, the, the union representative will be Eamon Reilly, General Secretary of the, of Congress of Trade Unions.

I mean, I know there's, there's still a bit of road to be traveled, but would you be optimistic they can get to the end of that road successfully?

So can you tell us, please, what unfortunately has happened now to the Minister for Culture and Communications, Patrick O'Donovan, today?

Hi, Matt.

Yeah, and, I, I mean, I think we're all aware that, you know, there's somebody who is ill here, and first and foremost, I suppose the most important thing is that they get the treatment that they deserve.

But, um, Patrick O'Donovan, the Minister for Communications, was chairing a meeting of European communications ministers, uh, in his own Limerick constituency today.

That was taking place, uh, as part of Ireland's EU presidency, uh, obviously.

Um, so he, uh, there was a doorstep, uh, encounter with journalists, uh, this morning when ministers, uh, were going in, it, it, at which he very sharply criticized some weekend reports that had, um, that had made reference to his, uh, health difficulties.

And I suppose his health difficulties in tandem with his political difficulties, which were more apparent last week, uh, around the time of the budget.

How can they have come to this s- political embarrassment for themselves?

I know a lot of people know about what this story is about, but do you think this is more than just about RTE?

I think a bit of it is about Patrick O'Donovan as well.

He is one of the more controversial ministers in government.

He has found himself in more than a few scrapes since he took the job as minister back in 2021.

I mean, I would say one thing about him, to his credit, is that he's not afraid.

He's not one of these ministers who never wants to make a mistake and never wants to annoy anybody.

He says himself he's not afraid to step on people's toes.

I think it was 830 or so million,

Were there any surprises in it for you, Pat? I mean, this was heavily leaked, wasn't it, over the past few weeks?

I think, you know, Ciarán, when you say heavily leaked, you mean ferreted out of government by the sterling work of the Irish Times political staff and others.

Look, I suppose there was a couple of things.

One of which, I mean, it's a very minor thing, but it was something that had been heavily leaked and that didn't show, didn't make any appearance in it, which was the so-called culture card, which had been flogged by sources close to Patrick O'Donovan, as they say, in recent weeks.

That was to be a 100 euro card that... given free to all 16-year-olds to use for entry to cultural pursuits.

No sign of that anywhere, so it'll be interesting to see what Patrick O'Donovan has to say about that whenever he does his post-budget press conference.

One thing I suppose that hadn't been flagged beforehand was that there's going to be an extra billion euros put into the government's long-term savings funds.

I think this is, you

First, I was joined on the line by Irish Times political editor Pat Leahy from Leinster House, and I began by asking him to take us through the headline elements of this year's budget.

Pretty much as expected when Simon Harris, and after him, uh, Jack Chambers got to their feet in the Dáil earlier on.

So all those, uh, uh, all, all those main measures that had been flagged in recent days, the tax cuts for, um, for, well, for everybody I guess, but, uh, mostly favoring, uh, middle income earners.

They were high up in the speech, increasing the entry point for the higher rate of tax by €2,500, and then the main tax credits going up, uh, by 125 each, which will, according to the budget documentation calculations, result in, uh, middle income earners benefiting to the tune of about €1,500, um, on their, uh, on their tax bills.

There was some details on the, uh, on the new investment, uh, accounts.

Also, um, uh, tax cuts on the second USC band as expected.

Something that we flagged, um, this morning, which seems to have been a fairly late entrant, uh, into the tax package, was the cut in capital gains tax, down from 33%, uh, to 31%, and there was some, uh, adjustment, uh, upward adjustment to capital acquisitions tax or inheritance tax.

Will there be much blowback on the, on the fact that they're, uh, basically reducing the carbon tax? The carbon tax was supposed to increase to make us shift, um, the way we live and, and move away from fossil fuels and so forth to meet climate change goals, and they've now retreated on that, in the, in the short to medium term, at least.

[laughs]

[laughs] So there, there's a certain amount of this which you would expect every year.

That having been said, um, this does seem to be the most difficult budget process, that the process of the budget ministers, particularly the Minister for Public Expenditure, Jack Chambers, agreeing with each of his colleague ministers what their spending limit is for next year.

And I think the reason that that is, uh, is difficult, Katie, is because, uh, he appears to be insisting, uh, on reducing the rate of increase, uh, if I can put it like that.

These are not budget cuts, but they are reductions in the rate that budgets have been increasing in recent years.

So he has put a limit of 6%.

And actually, that's not, you know, his, just Jack Chambers' idea.

I mean, as you say, w- we know this is, some of this is performative, presumably, but i- does it go slightly beyond that this time, do you think?

And I mean, I suppose you can draw a link between the coalition getting re-elected and those energy credits in the budgets leading up to the election, I think as well.

I mean, I think you can.

Those, I mean, they were known as once off, but they were repeated for three years in a row to, you know, to the government's credit.

It did withdraw them last year.

Remember also, though, that last year was Pascal Donoghue's last budget.

He was sort of the apostle of prudence around government for many years.

He's no longer there.

If you were the government, would you be worried 29% satisfaction rating or is that kind of classic kind of midterm government blues? Maybe they were at that level five years ago as well, were they?

Pat, what happened to Michael Healy-Ray?

Morning, Anton.

He was in his car.

He was, I think, driving home to Kerry after spending part of the day in Leinster House.

He was stopped on Cork Street in Dublin city centre.

He had his window open.

Now, I suppose not alone is Michael Healy-Ray one of the best known TDs, but his car has his his name adorned on the side.

But this seems to be one of the more significant assaults.

Was it Saturday now? And you were almost incredulous at some of the things that he'd said, although in a sense not surprised, I suppose.

Hi, Ian.

Good to be with you.

Yeah, I mean, no doubt you've sat through a full Trump speech or a full Trump rally or a full Trump press conference.

I dare say not all of your listeners have because our familiarity with Donald Trump comes mostly from, you know, brief clips on the news or social media or whatever.

But to actually sit through a full... hour or half hour of Trump is quite the experience.

And I think his comments about a united Ireland, even though there does seem to have been some element to which they were premeditated.

Has public opinion moved markedly over the last few years, and where do you think it stands at the moment?

Uh, Pat, was there a, a bit of a standoff, a bit of kicking and screaming in the Dáil?

Uh, there was, yeah, a little bit of a row over the order of business, but the government has a majority, so it won the vote.

I sort of wondered if the opposition would continue to kick off, uh, after it had lost the vote on the order of business, but, uh, it didn't.

The whole thing was over in, yeah, about an hour and a half or so.

The Dáil met at 12 o'clock.

The vote was taken at about, uh, 20 to, about half one, 20 to 2:00, and it passed, uh, easily, as we expected, by 104 votes to 49.

So most TD- TDs were here.

Yeah

[laughs]

...

I don't remember that quite as, quite as well.

But I, I suppose in, in, in each case, it is, um, it is politics to the forefront, uh, for the government.

Yes, it does look skittish.

Uh, there's no doubt about that, and it looks skittish at a time of the year when looking skittish for the government can cost the exchequer an awful lot of money because, of course, we're in the run-in to the budget, which takes place in the first week of, uh, of October.

And I think one of the big dangers for the government here is that it, it suggests that, you know, that there will be, that that pressure for cost of living reliefs in the budget may yet yield results.

What are the chances now of the government hitting that?

You had a, a, a good run with them, though.

Yeah.

Again, so similar to, like we said, we talked about injuries before.

It's part of the game, right? You, you, you benefit from it sometimes, and it hurts you other times, right? But, so that year I was, I, I was basically the last guy cut at camp, and, and I got, and I literally got sent down.

So I was like, and I had, I, I already kinda made up my mind, like no matter what happened, like I, we had a place in Boston, so I was like, I, I...

My wife was working in Boston, so we were gonna stay there.

And if I was in Providence, I was gonna commute, and if I was bo- a Boston, great.

Mm

Why didn't they get round to it?

I think it was partly a scheduling issue in the Oireachtas.

The legislation, I'm not sure, is quite ready yet.

But also these things can, of course, be overcome when there is political will.

So the real answer to your question, I suppose, is that there isn't the political will there to do so right now.

And why was that missing? Well, I suppose chatter around Leinster House would suggest that it is related to unease in the Fianna Fáil party, particularly as to whether the the enactment of the legislation could threaten Ireland's traditional neutrality.

Now, the single unifying strand in Ireland's traditional neutrality has been that it means whatever the government says it means.

Why haven't they done that yet?

... after the first week of it.

Yeah, I mean, the, the opening ceremonies, the meeting with the com- in, the opening ceremonies in Dublin Castle, the, the, the meetings with the commission down in Cork, all that seemed to go off without a hitch.

There were certainly no, um, security alerts insofar as we're aware, um, uh, that happened during that period.

Uh, but it will be very, a, a pretty intensive, uh, six months.

Well, people talk about six months, but actually the meetings are kind of concertinaed into four and a half months because the meetings don't take place during August because Europe goes on holidays, very sensibly, during August, and there's no meetings taking place, uh, during the, the last two weeks of December either.

So, you've got this period of September, I mean, d- during July for sure, but then September, October, November, when the really intensive stuff will be going on.

And the culmination of all that probably is two days in November in Dublin Castle when there's a, a meeting of all the EU leaders, but also on the day before, there is a meeting of the European Political Community, which is basically everybody in, uh, in Europe, so including people like the Swiss, including the British, including-

Mm

So what do the transfers reveal?

Transfers always matter, Anton, and they matter especially in a by-election because there's only one seat.

So to get to a quota, the winning candidate is going to need 50% plus one of the votes.

Nobody's next to near that on the first count, obviously, so they're going to depend on what votes they can get, second, third, fourth preferences from other candidates.

And we've pulled that as well.

Now, what it indicates, is that while Sinn Féin are in the lead, that the Social Democrats are in a good position to overtake them in the later camps.

Daniel Ennis, the Social Democrat candidate, is a bit of a transfer magnet, whereas Janice Boylan of Sinn Féin finds it harder to get those transfers from candidates that will be eliminated, like Gray McAdams and Cliona Gale, Janet Horner of the Greens.

Despite this, multiply convicted criminal Gerry Hutch is doing well.

What stands out for you here, Pat?

So a couple of things, I think.

Sinn Féin is clearly putting a lot of effort on the ground in this.

Of course, it's Mary Lou McDonald's constituency, and they're putting a lot of effort into getting the vote out.

A lot of their canvassing concentrating on those areas where McDonald pulls in big votes.

And that is having an effect.

So she's on 21 percent, which is about where Mary Lou McDonald herself got in the in the last general election.

What will it mean for Sinn Féin if they don't win this seat?

What are the standout findings for you?

Yeah, so I, I think there's, there's, there's probably three things that strike me first off about this.

The first is the first one that you mentioned, which is that Sean Kyne of Fine Gael is leading on 17%.

Now, that's at a time when the government, and, you know, we measured this in relation to the fuel protests in, uh, in the poll, where 67% of people say they are dissatisfied with the government's, uh, with the government's handling of the fuel protests, and that is an important issue in the by-election, particularly in that constituency.

So for Sean Kyne to be topping this opinion poll is quite an achievement for him, and it does show that he has a route to victory.

That's not to say that victory is assured or anything like that, but he definitely has a viable route to victory.

The second surprise, I think, is the performance of Helen Ogbu of the Labour Party.

And would, in terms of Sinn Féin, would they, w- looking at this, might they be tempted to divert resources to Dublin, do you think, to their Dublin campaign?

that mean it's going to get flung at him?

Sure it is, of course.

I mean, what else would we be asking him about? I mean, there might be a few desultory questions about the Irish Open, but this is, of course, what both men will be asked about during that encounter in the Oval Office.

And now, look, the Taoiseach has got through one of these things perfectly.

Before last year, he was in the Oval Office just a couple of weeks after that ambush of Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office.

And there was something approaching terror amongst senior Irish officials in advance of that.

Tisha got through it.

registered as a company,

What kind of president do you think Catherine Connolly will be?

Right.

Well, I suppose we'll be looking for some signals of that today during her inauguration address.

I mean, there'll be plenty of pomp and ceremony, as you referred to earlier on at Dublin Castle today.

The one point at which Catherine Connolly will get to speak today to not just a gathering in Dublin Castle, I suppose, but to the country at large, will be after she formally becomes president, after the 21-gun salute, and she's invited to give her address.

So I think people will be watching that.

I mean, it would be unusual if she was to go ahead and signal that, differences with the government at that sort of occasion.

There is another view, a less optimistic view, that says she could actually emerge as a critic of the government and kind of go toe-to-toe with the government on certain issues, which would be tricky because, as we know, sitting governments don't like being critical of presidents because it's a battle they generally can't win.

What exactly do we know at this stage?

Morning, Shane.

Yeah, well, we know that the woman in question, Ursula Nishanon, was jailed, as you said, by the Special Criminal Court, which is the court that is normally used for organized crime, subversive organizations, that type of thing.

She was a member of IRAGI, Socialist Republican Group, but she was jailed for what looks like an attempt to steal arms.

She was arrested in a stolen van.

She and her co-accused were stopped close to the premises of a firearms dealer.

One of the weapons that was discovered in the van.

I