The VIPs arrive for the Presidency, new rural housing guidelines and what to do about Aughinish

The big event of the week, and according to Europe Minister Thomas Burn, Joe, wasn't it? He said it was a generational moment for Ireland, the launching of the EU presidency on the 1st of July.

Talk us through how it all unfolded at Dublin Castle.

Well, we've certainly been talking about it for a very long time.

So I suppose we've talked it up to this place where it's such a huge event.

I think overall it went very well.

I mean, there was a few things that there were obviously worries about, which was around security, around, you know, getting people there and getting people out again.

And I think that went very well.

Obviously, we had Vladimir Zelensky coming to Ireland.

Vladimir

now, we have

to...

Of course, yes, not Vladimir, Vladimir.

Ukrainian pronunciation.

He'll be emailing the podcast if we don't get it correct.

Keep an

ear to these

things.

Which is why we do it, of course.

So he arrived into Baghdad and that was seamless.

You could see the security was there.

I mean, it was both in the tower there.

You could see men with very high-powered rifles.

And you could also see in some of the flight trackers that in the advance of his arrival, there was Irish, Irish Army helicopters out over Dublin Bay.

There were PC-9s in the air as well.

So it was very interesting.