Peter Burke

The Irish Daily Mail has two stories based on projections of population growth here.

The lead story draws on a document prepared for the Minister for Enterprise, Peter Burke, back in August, outlining the country's future economic growth will increasingly depend on migration, with significant demographic challenges, an ageing population and a declining share of working-age people.

Inside, the paper looks at another government briefing document, this time for the Department of Education, forecasting that the number of pupils entering secondary school is expected to fall by 17% over the next 15 years.

Ahead of World Stroke Day tomorrow, many of the papers carry photographs of cabin man Ciarán O'Carroll alongside their reports of how he credits a work colleague with saving his life in April 2022 while they were on a work call together.

And that's what we don't have at the moment.

We have each department kind of running in parallel In some cases, yes, interfering in the sense that we saw, for example, the Department of Enterprise, you know, the Minister for Enterprise, Peter Burke, actually strongly advocating for decreases in excise duties, for example, strongly advocating that there shouldn't be labelling of alcohol products.

So, you know, we are at a loss as to this lack of coherency.

And we think that the only way around it is to have a central office which would actually look at all aspects of alcohol.

And secondly, that when they did then start making semi-frantic offers of negotiation and talk, that they were entirely disingenuous and too late.

We're joined by Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism, and Employment, and Fine Gael TD, TD for Longford-Westmeath.

Peter Burke, this is essentially your fault.

It is absolutely not the government's fault.

First, I would say I really empathize with so many people in our country that are going to be ... face significant stress today because of appointments are going to be missed in healthcare settings and educational settings, many people having their daily lives disrupted that are planned out.

It has said very clearly to all our union leaders that the negotiation table is open.

It has asked all the leadership of our unions to take their seats and negotiate a fair and sustainable agreement, first of all, for many people working in our public service and civil service right across the country to get fair pay, pay of which we want to see essentially outpacing inflation, like the agreement from 2019 delivered.

But Peter Burke, what they're saying is that you didn't come to them with a very clear offer of saying, "Look, here is the, the basis of what we would like to discuss," and then spent all of the time, and I don't mean you personally, but you governmentally, spent all of your time appearing on media saying, "Sure, the door is open.

Mm

... uh, Minister for Agriculture, we had, uh, Mr. Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, and we had James Brown, as well as a whole load of other local, uh, public representatives.

And a really big day, and they announced, Enterprise Ireland announced the five million grant for the project.

Now, why would they do that? One of the things, Alan, is that, um, like, we are, as, as a, as a country, we are majorly exposed to a very long supply chain in, in flour.

I'll move on in just a second, but I have two quick questions for you, Shay Brennan, as the government TD here.

Addressing RTE, if the €20 million shortfall is to remain, we heard Minister Peter Burke in the Dáil say, I don't expect, he said, compulsory redundancies.

Would you like to rule out categorically compulsory redundancies for RT staff?

I would like to.