Sep 3, 2026 · 46 min · 11 segments
James Conway, a farmer among other roles is one of Ireland's most well known voices on social media. James speaks about his start on social media, the work he is doing with friend of the pod Maurice…
So, I mean, obviously, we'll touch upon the fuel protests, which happened a few months ago and are maybe bubbling on the surface again.
But what do you think has been the...
Or is there a particular drive, do you think, to more self-sufficiency in the past few years through... multiple factors or the cost of living? Or what do you think has kind of seen that, as you call it, renaissance in doing so? Oh,
I think in every country around the world, there's different issues that are at the top, if you get me.
But with regards to Ireland, I think it's kind of the ineptitude of government.
And a lot of people have a difficulty accepting that A government that can waste like millions upon millions of taxpayers funds.
Like you do come to a headspace where you think at some stage there's not going to be millions to waste and we're going to be left in a fairly bad situation.
A lot of people who would be familiar with the grid, you know, people who work for the ESB and air grid and stuff like that, they realize how close our grid is actually to flat.
I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not, but Airgrid released a statement to the newspapers the other day that three times this summer they've had to fire up an emergency power station because there's simply not enough electricity to meet demand.
And so we have these electrical plants that we were meant to be closing, like Money Point, you know, if it was a coal-powered station or that, it was meant to be switched over.
But they're actually being used again because our grid is in in absolute disarray.
The construction of data centres is occurring at a pace now where our grid can't actually cope.
but completely under sufficient in things like cereals and potatoes and vegetables and fruit.
Yeah, I think there's a myriad of issues where anyone who has kind of a forward thinking mindset looks forward and says, no, I don't see the solution to these problems.
So I do need to be a little bit prepared and Like even a simple thing like the digital ID.
A lot of people might be coming to the mindset where, right, well, if I had a digital ID, then an outside power could possibly control how much diesel I can use or how much meat I could eat.
So, I mean, obviously, we'll touch upon the fuel protests, which happened a few months ago and are maybe bubbling on the surface again.
But what do you think has been the...
Or is there a particular drive, do you think, to more self-sufficiency in the past few years through... multiple factors or the cost of living? Or what do you think has kind of seen that, as you call it, renaissance in doing so? Oh,
I think in every country around the world, there's different issues that are at the top, if you get me.
But with regards to Ireland, I think it's kind of the ineptitude of government.
And a lot of people have a difficulty accepting that A government that can waste like millions upon millions of taxpayers funds.
Like you do come to a headspace where you think at some stage there's not going to be millions to waste and we're going to be left in a fairly bad situation.
A lot of people who would be familiar with the grid, you know, people who work for the ESB and air grid and stuff like that, they realize how close our grid is actually to flat.
I'm not sure if you're aware of it or not, but Airgrid released a statement to the newspapers the other day that three times this summer they've had to fire up an emergency power station because there's simply not enough electricity to meet demand.
And so we have these electrical plants that we were meant to be closing, like Money Point, you know, if it was a coal-powered station or that, it was meant to be switched over.
But they're actually being used again because our grid is in in absolute disarray.
The construction of data centres is occurring at a pace now where our grid can't actually cope.
but completely under sufficient in things like cereals and potatoes and vegetables and fruit.
Yeah, I think there's a myriad of issues where anyone who has kind of a forward thinking mindset looks forward and says, no, I don't see the solution to these problems.
So I do need to be a little bit prepared and Like even a simple thing like the digital ID.
A lot of people might be coming to the mindset where, right, well, if I had a digital ID, then an outside power could possibly control how much diesel I can use or how much meat I could eat.
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