Simon Coveney

But there was always a cohort of people within Fine Gael who really sat, that sat uncomfortably with.

Remember, two to one, the grassroots of Fine Gael voted for Simon Coveney over Leo Varadkar.

That happened for a reason.

And I just think what you're now seeing is the working out of that discomfort writ large.

Well, obviously, the midterms having huge political impact in the U.S., but also huge political ramifications beyond that, most particularly the relationship between Europe and the U.S. and Ireland and the U.S.

In a moment, we're going to be talking to Simon Coveney, now head of global affairs at EYMEA and former foreign affairs minister.

But first, our reporter, Biber Holmes, took to the streets of Philadelphia to ask people how they're feeling about the results.

Happy and joyous for the first time in two years.

So I'm happy with the results, very happy, ecstatic.

So that was the report from Barbara Holmes there on the streets of Philadelphia.

Simon Coveney is with us.

Simon, when we look at the sort of foreign policy implications of this, obviously American support or lack of it in Ukraine is a very significant issue.

What I would say to that point, firstly, David, is last year when the minister introduced his rental reform bill, I proposed an amendment to introduce a rent break, which effectively would mean that if rent inflation hit 10%, that an automatic break... would kick in to stop rents rising any further.

The biggest issue is that we need some level of control on rising rents, number one, but we need to increase the half limits to actually give people breathing space because if you don't increase the half limits, you're going to end up unfortunately with more people entering homelessness if you go back to 2016 when Simon Coveney first introduced the rent pressure zone legislation he did that because we had double digit rent inflation and my concern with Minister Brown's market rent reset as part of his bill that came in in March of this year that we are going to see double digit rent in inflation again and unfortunately things as they currently stand are going to get worse.

Okay.

Shane Moynan, if I could bring you in again.

I would say it's 10 years.

I know, I think it was early 2017 when Simon Coveney was Minister for Housing and he promised at the start of 2017 that he would end child homelessness in his tenure as Minister for Housing.

And yeah, obviously that just...

It never happened.

I think Enda Kenny used to go somewhere else in Kerry.

Simon Coveney, when he was in college, used to go down to West Cork during his holidays.

They all go on holidays.

In fact, all of the politicians that you mentioned who would never have gone on paternity leave all went on holidays.

And I'll end on one thing.

We've gone from a minister saying at least these people are in emergency accommodation in 2026 to you, Rory, on the floor doll, from where Simon Coveney was on the 4th of January 2017, where he said, I'm not crazy.

I will end homeless families living in these emergency accommodation hostels and hotels and supposed to flip that, go full circle.

was recently revealed in the lobbying register that Simon Coveney now lobbies for, Johnny Roan and the construction industry.

And its circle is complete.

Exactly,

This is 2011.

Simon Coveney and Joe Higgins were also on the panel.

He's still there, Joe.

Sorry, you're technically wrong.

in front of our european colleagues we should be pulling our weight all of this which i find incredibly patronizing given the huge impact ireland has had on conflict internationally and helping ban cluster bombs in the work we've done on international like i'm quite embarrassed by some of our european colleagues who failed to step up on international law and i think we've done them a service by pressing on those issues but really crucially Yes, there has been a push.

For example, Simon Coveney, before Russia evaded Ukraine, was holding arms fairs in the Aviva Stadium and attending and speaking at arms fairs.

There's been those who've desired a closer mush.

And a really clear example of that was back when Ireland... were doing humanitarian missions with our wonderful Navy, rescuing 8,000 people a year from the Mediterranean.

Um, one of them is about, uh, is Gilmore.

Another one is certainly Simon Coveney, uh, the famous tweet about half of it being drunk and hungover at the Ardilaun, uh, Hotel, uh, in, um, in September of, uh, of 2010.

But Cohen was always, like, he saw himself as an ordinary, although well-off member of a, of a political family who were grounded in their community in Offaly.

Uh, the Cohens were like anybody else in Offaly.