But where were the hottest places in Ireland in 2026?

Yes, it was heavily weighted towards the south and east and the south, east and midlands was the hottest, sunniest and driest part for most of the summer.

Now, the northwest station like Malinhead, Belmullet had about half the sunshine that stations in the southeast like Johnstown, Castle and County Wexford had.

had, you know, double the sunshine what it had in the northwest.

So there was a big divide.

The high pressure was centred kind of to the south of the country and over the south of the country, whereas the northwest was frequently, you know, frequented by basically by low pressure kind of that was closer by to the north and some stubborn weather fronts over the northwest.

So how much rainfall was there?

Well, it was drier on average overall.

Will you take us through what was recorded?

Yes.

Good afternoon, Rachel.

Yeah, so in Ireland overall, it was the second hottest July on record with a mean temperature of 17.25 degrees.

Now, that's just slightly behind July 2013, which was the hottest July, and then the hottest month overall was August 1995.

So this is the third, this July's the third hottest month overall, so those, those two months being, uh, s- just slightly more, uh, warmer.

And that's, um, a, a reflection of that this month the, the, the far northwest, um, wasn't that exceptional.

So it certainly has so far been a year of extremes.

Where do you sit on commodities at the moment? Because I get the feeling that maybe things are a little bit expensive and maybe you need a pause, but

I'll let you answer that.

Copper's gone from $2 to $6.

Gold's gone from over 20 years, $200 to $5,000.

So a lot of these issues that have been driving it and may continue in the future have been reflected in the commodity price, and it's a question of how much.

So we've been bullish on commodities, inflection and inflation.

You've got three big capital expenditure cycles, net zero.

something to smile about

Can you be wrong or too early into a new idea well before an investment thesis comes to fruition? And how do you stay patient waiting for other investors to recognise what you have already observed?

Yeah, well, you can obviously be wrong.

I mean, yeah, I'd love to have every investment decision have been correct.

But yeah, there's definitely been some mistakes along the way.

I'd rather to kind of leave them off the equation for the moment.

But you always get embarrassed by those.

But typically, it's because you didn't do the work properly.

What's the investment thesis behind this theme and how much more is there to play out here after they produce such strong returns in 2025? And it might also be worthwhile just getting your view on the comparison of the European banks with Australia's banks as well.

Did that push up the rankings or is this part of a longer trend which sees us heating up?

Yes, so the mean temperature for spring for Ireland was 10.14. And that's the third warmest spring on record.

And now seven of the top 10 warmest springs since 1900 have been since 2001.

So there's definitely a climate change increase there.

We've seen a clear trend of the springs getting warmer there.

And indeed, every month and every season is trending upwards.

And the rainfall was around about average, about 103% for the whole of spring.

Okay, so I suppose taking an average temperature across the three months of spring, how did we do there where that extra hot week is kind of diluted by the average?