Path to Power

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To learn more about investing in or being involved in the real assets shaping a sustainable future, you can visit the Greenman Group's website at thegreenman.group Hello and welcome to Path to Power, joined today by Daniel McConnell, editor of the Business Post, and by John Lee, executive editor of the Irish Daily Mail. 01:38 So, August, quite enough time politically, but a big issue for Jim O'Callaghan to deal with this week was the outrage caused by The shocking event on the M9 last weekend, in which five teenagers died as a result of their own driving, deliberately going at speed the wrong way on the M9 motorway, and four innocent victims as a result of their behaviour, three sisters and one of them their seven-year-old child, all of who received very, very serious injuries for which, hopefully from which they will recover, although you fear it's going to be a long recovery. 02:19 And it's also going to be, I'd imagine, shattering mentally for them, given what had happened. And unfortunately, we've had a number of instances like this recently of... 02:30 joyriders, boy racers, whatever you want to call them, who have engaged in this reckless behavior. So let's talk through the political response to this. Danny, I'll start with you and the rest of it. You know, the Gardaí are under pressure, but then what can the Gardaí do? Because if the Gardaí chase these individuals and if the Gardaí then become involved in collisions, what sort of reaction would there be to that? 02:58 Yeah, and I mean, immediately focus went on to the fact that these boys had obviously, you know, there had been talk that they had stolen a car and were kind of had become known to members of Vanguardia Schia Conner earlier in the night. And that sort of guards were told to pull back or back away. And that obviously raised its own series of questions. 03:17 If wrongdoing is clearly being, you know, kind of underway, why would you not intervene? 03:23 And then throughout Monday, and I actually listened to your program on the last word on Monday, Matt, and you had a really, you had a very, I think you had someone from the GRA, the vice president of the GRA, I can't remember her name, but she said out very clearly the failure or the hollowness of the political response to this. That Jim O'Callaghan said, oh, we will get the training for the Gardaí, they will get the training. All resources, Jim O'Callaghan said all the resources needed for Gardaí will be made available. Making up laws and they're for off, Danny. Yeah, but like what her point was, ultimately, there is no training plan. 03:53 So the training plan is going to be many months in developing. So therefore, it's going to be well into 2027 before any sort of plan is ready to go in order to this idea of chasing down or being able to kind of intervene with situations like this. 04:07 That goes to show there's a hollowness in the political messaging around all of this. 04:11 I think it's worse than that in the sense that it is clear that the very limited training will be done this year now because of the pressure on Jim O'Callaghan. He's going to put pressure on Justin Kelly, the Guarded Commissioner. But they're already stretched with the EU presidency. Exactly. There'll be very few people who will go to the UK to get training. Then they'll come back and there will be a very slow rollout of the training for the Garda Shakana throughout 2027. But then what will happen, I'd suggest, is that even after all the training is done, there still won't be the actual, they won't send because there are legitimate fears that you could make things worse. 04:48 But then I think people do want the idea that you can't just stand back and watch and let these thugs do what they're doing. 04:55 The reaction of the public, the reaction generally to this incident shows where the Irish public's, the mindset of the Irish public is. They want the laws of this country enforced. They don't want a police force that's out of control, but they want the laws enforced. And they don't want people saying, sure, we can run wild on our streets and on our roads with impunity because the guards are either too afraid of litigation or too afraid you know, of bureaucratic reasons or resource issues to take it on. 05:22 I mean, can you imagine making a split-second decision when you've got a manual that apparently has about 15 particular points that have to be addressed over 15 pages before you decide. And by the time you've decided, the car is about 10 kilometers down the road. 05:34 And they also have to get permission from a command and control. 05:38 Well, that's a simple exercise, I think, to do that. 05:44 You know, I'd be careful of this only because in my research this week, I haven't fully determined where the court case is at. So I won't identify what's going on there fully. But there was an incident on a motorway a number of years ago where a Garda, doing his job, pursued... 06:02 a number of these people the wrong way down the motorway. They died and the alleged criminals died. 06:11 These were three individuals who did have a lengthy record of criminality. 06:15 And the guards prosecuted. So since then, if you're a Garda on limited wages compared to your predecessors, you're out at two o'clock in the morning in a squad car, and you're in pursuit, and these people decide to go the wrong way down the motorway, you're aware immediately of what can happen to you. So unless you have the support of Garda management, who then seeks support from the government, that if a person, if a Garda doing his job can be comfortable, that he will not be prosecuted and end up spending four or five years of his life going through the courts, suspended from duty, There was in another space, it appeared to me in enthusiasm by Garda management, a previous administration, let's call it in the Gardaí, for prosecuting Gardaí. 07:09 There was a number of long-running court cases down in Limerick in relation to other stuff, not actual events on the roads. 07:18 And quite a few other incidents, some, there was another one during COVID where a guard had lent a man a bike. And, you know, so if you're left at that split second decision about what to do with some crazed individuals taking everyone's lives into their hands, and in that moment you go, oh, well, if I mess up here, I'm going to end up being blamed for it. So, I mean, that's a fundamental problem. And then there are very, very basic measures you can take that exist in other jurisdictions where I know of motorways in some European countries where there are spikes that shred your tyres should you go down the wrong way. 07:59 So for Jim O'Callaghan then to come out and say, we're considering bringing a new law in that would make it illegal to drive down the... 08:10 the wrong way in a motorway would indicate to me that Jim O'Callaghan would want to think about getting out of justice as quickly as he can and do something about the leadership of Fianna Fáil because if he thinks that he can wander through justice for the next two or three years coming up with bunk like that his career isn't going to go very far I mean that was an absolutely lamentable response to what happened on the roads in this country last week And the governmentals, and then across the board, the political system, to start blaming social media companies for this incident. 08:46 I mean, they're very, very fundamental. 08:49 There's a very, very fundamental resolution to this problem, and that's empower the Gardaí to deal with these, as some public reps have called them, thugs. 08:58 Yeah, but John, I think the big problem there is that, like, I mean, when you're coming from a backdrop of the Morris Tribunal and other excesses, The political system has sort of tried to recalibrate, so therefore those sort of excesses or bad behaviours can't repeat themselves. Now, has that pendulum gone too far? Yes, it absolutely has. The guards have to implement the laws on our street and have to make sure that the streets are safe. They have a duty of care to the people of this country to make sure that they're safe as best as they possibly can. 09:24 But this idea of promises made in the immediate aftermath, we see it time and time again, particularly from this government and the last government, promises made in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy or a shocking incident. And this was a shocking incident by any time. 09:37 To prosecute a Garda for carrying out his duty... Say there's a bank robbery and the ERU are called to a bank robbery and a gun is aimed at a Garda and the Garda shoots that assailant. Should we then think it's acceptable that the Garda faces prosecution for that, for carrying out his duty? 09:56 Let me put another angle on that. 09:58 Those people are in a missile going down a motorway affecting four people going on their holidays. 10:03 You see, if you take the analogy, if you say the gun in a robbery, are the Gardaí supposed to be not shooting at the robbers on the basis that the bullets might hit somebody else? And it's a similar thing in relation to the cars, isn't it? That, you know, you're afraid of chasing the car down there in case you're then responsible for hitting somebody else in the car. 10:25 But again... 10:26 You don't do something for fear of a catastrophic outcome. We had a catastrophic outcome. 10:30 You have to deal with the issue that's happening in front of you. 10:33 And for me, you know, it's this sort of thing of, you know, the Gardaí are operating with hands to tie their back, inadequate resources, you know, obviously the squad, you know, the amount of numbers within the force themselves, you know, have long not been adequate because we're giving our growing population. We've discussed the inadequacy of policing in Dublin City Centre before on this podcast. I mean, you see it all over the place. But I just thought the response to this, from a lot of sides, was very knee-jerk. 11:03 I mean, the cause to kind of put the blame on the social media companies, the fact that we know that at least one of the five involved was in the care of Tusla at the time. 11:13 And at least one was on bail. On bail. And breaking the bail conditions. And that's something I want to discuss. 11:20 But here's the awkward question that a lot of people are asking. Just because they're children, do they get a free pass for their bad behavior? Because they're children, do they not have to be somewhat responsible for their actions, for the willful breaking of the law time and time again, for bragging about breaking the law on social media time and time again? Like... That's a question that a lot of people are asking this week. And we can't just all say it's the state's fault, it's, you know, parents' fault, it's all there. 11:48 Isn't this one of the problems maybe, John, that we've had this thing that everyone sort of has extreme solutions, that you either have rigorous enforcement of the law, imprisonment of children and people on bail, or on the other hand, it's all about, oh, we must put more resources into the community to ensure these things don't happen. Whereas, actually, you probably need to do a bit of both, don't you? 12:10 The sociological environment that leads to all of this has existed for an awful long time. I'm from Malahide, not exactly an urban wasteland, but When I grew up on the north side of Dublin, we were near Darndale and Coolock and other neglected areas of the country where joyriding car theft was a massive, massive issue for communities there. Local representatives across the board, I remember Tommy Broon used to do an awful lot of work trying to prevent. So car theft has been a huge issue with young miners involved in it. 12:44 We can't deal with that. We can't deal with that quickly. But what we can deal with overnight is... 12:51 a phenomenon now where car thieves have determined that if they drive the wrong way in a motorway they can escape justice. That can be dealt with overnight. So forget about all the sociological solutions. They can be dealt with quickly. 13:06 Overnight, a Garda can receive from his superiors a guarantee from the Department of Justice that there is a legal code protecting them when they drive a car in pursuit of an individual. And then in every aspect, that can be dealt with. The rest of it, the sociological issues that have led to this they can't be dealt with quickly and of course they're existent and no one wants to ignore them but they But also, I have to say, imagine you were with one of your kids in your car driving and you saw a car coming at you. 13:42 On your own, you can half imagine it. But to have a seven-year-old child in the back of the car and there's a BMW coming at you at, what, 200 kilometers an hour? 13:50 Well, can I just add to that? I sometimes think it's unfair in a lot of people who live in, you know, working class or deprived areas. The vast majority of them do not turn to criminality. And this, you know, the idea that there are no options and no alternatives, I think at times, is rather patronising than condescending. And I think, no, I'm not saying you're saying that, but some of the stuff that I've heard this week. 14:14 And just to clarify, when I refer to those estates that were long neglected in North Dublin, it was the communities that had approached their local representatives about the hell that they were suffering. from kids speeding up and down their streets. This is 40 years ago. 14:31 Sorry, I remember it all very much from the north side of Cork City, where I'm from as well. You know, so this is something that, the difference now, I suppose, is the social media era. But the point is, is that most people reject that. And, you know, this thing about soft-soaping necessarily, those bad parenting as well, has to be addressed. And I thought it was interesting, Colin Crowe has taken a lot of flack for referring to these five individuals who died as thugs. But you have to say, the behavior that they engaged in was, at very best, thuggish. 15:03 Of course it was. It was consistent. And, you know, two of them were under suspicion, had been questioned by the Guardian in relation to an unfortunate motorcyclist in Cairo, who was run over by thugs in a stolen car. But those guys are beyond... 15:17 This was not their first time. In the short term, with this phenomenon that's going on, those guys, sadly, are beyond rescue. That's just... There's nothing can be done with those people. 15:25 But should they be in detention? Of course they should be. And this, I think, is one of the issues at the moment, right? And this is a political issue that I think we should address. 15:34 Has there become too soft a situation in relation to... Look, I know we have difficulties in the past with reform schools and taking children away from families and we don't like doing that. But have we become perhaps a little bit too soft in dealing with troubled and difficult teenagers that they're given absolutely too much leeway? Have we been too soft in relation to those who re-offend when they're on bail? Do we have enough detention for young people's spaces? Do we have enough prison spaces? And something else that happened while I was away, and which I was quite shocked to see, was this thing, for example, because of alleged overcrowding in Limerick Women's Prison, Alison Chalk was released. 16:14 I just thought this is absolutely outrageous that you're in four weeks of a two-year sentence and you get released and this is regarded as an appropriate way of actually rehabilitating somebody. 16:26 So I was sitting in for you in the last word and we did a big topic on this and I was talking to Mark Moville from Galway on this and I said, is it normal that someone who has been involved in a violence assault who's already subject to a hefty, you know, kind of suspended sentence, i.e. there's a massive chunk of her two year plus, or I think it was 26 months sentence, already reduced by suspended, be it after 28 days. No, it's normal. The basis upon which Alison Chalk was put out was this community rehabilitation scene. Nothing to do with overcrowding. 16:57 But, you know, it was to do under this rehabilitation aspect, not to do with the real reason. 17:06 What's the point in the feck in getting a two-year prison sentence in the first place if you're going to be out in 20 years? 17:11 But I think that's used as a facility to cover for the overcrowding. There isn't a space for someone, for some person. So therefore they choose the well-heeled prison. 17:22 in inverted commas, respectable person to let out. 17:25 The point I made on radio that day, John, this was not a non-payment of parking tickets or a political protest or, you know. It was a violent assault. She bit somebody. Yeah. Unprovoked. She bit somebody. 17:36 And is her brother still in prison? 17:38 Yes. 17:39 So is there a bit of sexism involved here as well? 17:42 I think there's hardly any stasis for women in prison. I think my read of that trial was that the brother was the main instigator he led and she kind of piled in. 17:52 She still piled in and she bit and she did it was a violent assault by Boulder. She's convicted criminal. 17:58 Like that all to me just smacks of this is the state not being able to handle it. 18:03 But you see, this is again, the prison spaces, the program for government committed to an additional 1,500 prison spaces during the lifetime of this government. I don't know how many, there's been some work done in Clover Hill, hasn't there? But I've been baffled in recent years as to why it is that successive governments have not gone on and built a major new prison. True. And the reason why I think we need a major new prison, and we should have used that damn land out in Thornton Hall, which was, of course, all the controversy about 20 years ago, is that the population has increased dramatically. 18:36 So therefore, the number of people who are going to be involved in crime is actually going to be larger. And if people, you know, I know this thing about, oh, we don't want to be incarcerating people. We have to have rehabilitation. Yes, you have to have rehabilitation. But you know what? There are people who have to be incarcerated. And there are people, it has to be there as a deterrent that if you do something wrong, you will go to prison and you will. And sorry, one other thing in relation to that. If they want to give themselves cover as well in relation to this about creating extra prison spaces, you can say, well, Mount Joy has been decrepit for God knows how long. 19:09 you're building it as a replacement, even if in the end, you'll end up keeping your own eye open as well. 19:14 Anyone who wants to get an insight as to how our justice system works needs to just sit in the district court for a day and see, judge, you know, accused has 88 previous convictions or, you know, blah, blah, blah, right? The judge is almost doing everything they can. And I say this from a vast experience of going into the court. They do everything they can to almost keep these people out of prison, even though they have a clear record of re-offending, re-offending, re-offending. And they know that the minute they go in, because of the space and the overcrowding, a lot of them are going to be within 24 or 48 hours, depending on... And I'm speaking in generalities there, but you just see it. 19:49 You see it when you go into that court. 19:52 it's that revolving door system of people who are just, they don't give a crap if they're in front of a judge because they've been there before and they're out very, very quickly. There's something fundamentally, like last weekend was a wake-up call for this state in relation to what happened on the M9. 20:07 A wake-up call for him, but is it a wake-up call for the government? Will the government, when will the government deliver all of these prison spaces? I know they're talking about 400 in the immediate term, but we have a much bigger need than that, John. 20:19 It comes to political priorities. Firstly, we can't build a hospital. It's taken however long and how many overruns to build a children's hospital, which is still not operable. We couldn't build houses for an awful long time. The thought that we could rapidly build prisons is out there. 20:35 What I say about... I don't see how it could be that difficult. The land is there up in Thornton Hall. 20:41 But of course, bang up a few sheds and create, which we could do overnight to intern the IRA during the war and whatever else. And if it's needed for asylum seekers, we do that as well. There are very simple ways of dealing with it. Oberstown, our only major facility for dealing with juvenile offenders, there's currently a there's currently industrial action there because of the conditions that a lot of the prison guards, for want of a better definition of them, are talking about. 21:16 When I say about Jim O'Callaghan, I quote my... 21:22 A good friend and colleague, John Drennan, he said to me one day about justice. 21:27 If Jim O'Callaghan thinks he can wander along in a department with the history that it's had and that at some point the hoary, flaky hand doesn't stretch up from the swamp that is the Department of Justice and drag him down into it, like every other minister who's been there, he's fooling himself. And this... 21:47 extraordinary paralysis in Fianna Fáil, where people think they can go along in the departments for the next three years. The problems of justice are extraordinary. And he has dodged them very well, but in a short period of time. But this, had the Dáil been sitting, this could have gone very, very wrong for Jim McCallaghan. And I go back to it to You'd have had a Helen McEntee moment. Well, Helen McEntee was, to my eyes, and I've expressed that opinion on this programme before, she performed very, very badly in that department. Jim O'Callaghan has taken priority. 22:19 His priority has been dealing with the immigration system and has won himself great kudos. 22:25 But if we were to go between now and Christmas, with a situation where we can't incarcerate youths for this behaviour and where there are going to be more and more of these things and don't doubt there's copycat behaviour going to happen because now an awful lot of people who rob cars know if I go the wrong way and out of motorway I can't be arrested. So... 22:47 Jim O'Callaghan will show his mettle in the next few months or otherwise on this and clearly when it's dominated the headlines for a week as it has now doesn't matter that it's August it's a big big problem just looking here like joyriders drive wrong way down Dublin's M50 and N3 days after 23:04 After. And days before. And days before. 23:07 But there's a few things here that maybe need to be done. If we can't send cars after him, why not using... Maybe we get on to Bobby Healy. Would he come back and actually let the drones work on behalf of Garda Shecona? The drones can follow cars. Even the Garda helicopter. And it was remarkable. On Thursday evening, on The Last Word, Nile O'Connor from The Journal was on with me. And I just... 23:28 He was telling me about this latest incident that had happened in the early hours of the morning in Ballymun Finglas, where again, you had another car, went deliberately down the wrong side of the road. Stolen car, which was later found by the Gardaí. And I said, whatever happened to the Gardaí helicopter? 23:45 I live in rap mines and it used to be you'd hear the Gardaí helicopter overhead a lot. I can't remember the last time I actually heard the Gardaí helicopter. Apparently there is one in service, right? 23:58 But he was telling me a story that there's apparently one was bought by the Gardaí and it's in Oxford in England. And it's been there two years because the paperwork was wrong in relation to the parts and stuff going in it. And the thing is in storage and hasn't actually been delivered. 24:14 But there are, as I said, there are low-tech solutions to cars entering a roadway in the wrong way. There are, there are. Very cheap ones, which are not there. 24:22 I think having a helicopter following, we should have a fleet of helicopters actually doing that. And they're able to work at night and they do provide, I think, a degree of comfort to people that they know the Garda are doing something if you actually see and hear the helicopter. 24:36 So where I live in Druncondrae, was sort of on the fringes of when the Regency, remember the fall of the Regency and the follow-up, the killing of Eddie Hutch in Popular Row, which is again about a mile and a half from my house, right? 24:49 there were weeks where the Garda helicopter was omnipresent over our heads. I live about 10 minutes from Croke Park. Anytime there's a match in Croke Park, Garda helicopter would be up to monitor Jones's Road in particular in terms of traffic, kind of footfall. Like you say, it just hasn't been present. But surely, if you look at any other developed state, and obviously it was popularized a lot by America, kind of a chase down the motorway, It's not just the police helicopter. You'd have TV station helicopters up, you know, giving chase to the OJ Simpson and the likes to it. 25:23 It can be done. It's not relatively... Like, relatively, it's not that expensive to have it in operation. But again, the state, because of the crash, you have these layers of bureaucracy around procurement and all the rest of it, getting stuff deployed. So you have this repeated... 25:38 occurrence of things that have been bought, lying idle because they can't be used or deployed because of some paperwork hasn't been filled out or it hasn't ticked the box properly. We just need to get real in relation to this. John's point, I think, is well made. There's a political imperative. But I would also point out, like, Jim O'Callaghan made a major misstep during the fuel crisis where he called for the army to come out. That was a gaffe. That was ridiculous, right? Because you either make that bluff and deliver on it. And that one, I don't know, was it? 26:08 John, if you're going to threaten it, you have to do it. 26:10 You have to follow through. 26:13 And I say I think O'Callaghan has performed extremely well in and we're diverting away from this I think there's a lot more to say in it I presume but in that instance there was a situation where we couldn't use the tow trucks that we previously used because they were reluctant to go through picket lines and The army were the only people with those available to tow away those trucks, which we realized in the end we needed. But it just occurred to me there, and this is not a facetious point, but I've made it many times in relation to this person. 26:50 You mentioned the Hutch situation back then. 26:53 This is what criminals do, by the way. You know, they're not high profile, harmless robberies where they get millions of quid and go off and then end up on podcasts and running for the doll. This is what criminals do. They steal cars, they threaten lives. So maybe Gerry Hutch, rather than appear in picket lines as he has been recently, maybe he can intervene with these people. 27:16 Well, I have one other part of this before we take a break and before we move to other issues. I will say I will talk to John Deasy about this in our subscription edition that will be available from Sunday as well. But there was one other element, and I see Martin Collins' pavy point was out strongly condemning those for what he regarded as racist comments against travellers, which have been appearing on social media. Three of the five children involved here were from the traveller community. And there has been some of the relatives of those who've died have put up videos online. 27:49 And again, I think a certain degree of tone deafness about what has been put up online, because no sympathy expressed for the innocent victims, a sort of glorification of those who've died, not taking into account the criminality in which they were involved. 28:06 And Martin Collins of the belief that this is unfair, that people from non-traveller community would not be getting this abuse online, which I disagree with. 28:15 I totally disagree with that. 28:16 I think he's entirely wrong because I think, you know, even if these were five private school educated boys who had done this, I think no matter who it was, there would be outrage at what happened to this innocent family. 28:29 I actually think if there were five well-to-do laws, there would probably be more outrage. 28:32 Yeah. I think there'd be less empathy for people who had come from a background and the travelling community needs to deal with its sociological problems. A disadvantaged background doesn't give you a free pass when you're involved in something like this. 28:45 Bottom line. 28:47 Let's take a break. We'll be back to discuss the Healey Ray documentary and the HSC and politicians objecting to housing in their constituencies after this. Today's episode is brought to you by the Green Man Group. It's answering a critical question, how to invest in a sustainable future in real, tangible terms. Its answer lies in three areas, the energy transition, the places we live and shop, and the future of our food supply. The Greenman Group's strategy is to own and operate the physical infrastructure in these sectors, from solar energy generation and EV charging to agricultural projects and grocery-anchored real estate. 29:25 By building, managing and optimising these areas via its investment and operational businesses, the Group aims to build resilience and deliver long-term value. Explore its approach at thegreenman.group Welcome back to Path to Power. We have Daniel McConnell and John Lee with us this week. Did you watch the Healey Ray documentary? 29:47 I was sitting watching an action movie and I rang a TD because it was so, it was actually a good film, Red Notice I think it was called. I said, you're not watching the Healy Ray? Oh, Jesus. I said, thanks be to God for RT plus one. So I did watch it and I watched it late. 30:00 And it was actually Michael Healy Ray pulling out his shotgun and firing. 30:04 Story in the Times this morning that that gun has been taken off. That was previously. 30:09 That was back in 2013 when there was a special in TV3. And he himself and the son were shooting and apparently the Gardaí came along afterwards and confiscated the guns and they had to fight to get the guns back. 30:22 I was disappointed for you, though, Matt, there was some real veterans hauled out as pundits, which I was very surprised at. And they could have come to me. I was very disappointed for myself. 30:32 I'm not that much older than you, John, I think, you know. 30:34 Well, Christina Finn was there from the journal and she's, well, I just, I would have felt just a small, a bone to pick. 30:40 He's on every fucking document. Sorry. 30:42 He's on every documentary. He doesn't need me on this one. 30:44 No, it was really the appearance of Ivan Yates. 30:49 Well, I appeared very briefly for all of about two seconds, sort of laughing as Ivan and Michael Healy Ray are shouting at each other in the studio. That's probably the reason. The John Delaney night, and they had a real go. 31:02 Call him a leprechaun. 31:03 I'll tell you, and I'm trying to remember exactly what happened subsequent to that. So this is a little bit of background to this, but it has to be admitted. Michael Healy Ray delivered ratings for The Tonight Show. 31:17 I've had him on as a host and I think he's brilliant. 31:20 But that doesn't sound. Anyway, what happened was Siobhan Russell, who was the executive, the producer at the time on the program, decided we had to have Michael Healy Ray back. So there would have to be a rapprochement between Ivan and Michael Healy Ray. And it was agreed. Ivan did not want to apologize. And she was insisting that Ivan had to apologize to Michael to get him back. So there was an agreement. And this is a bit like Jesus, Stalin, Hitler pact. They were brought together in the studio a few minutes before they were due to go on air again. 31:54 And didn't the row break up between the two of them again? just before we're due to go to air. 32:00 Did you please say you recorded it? 32:01 No, unfortunately. And I'm there going, and I'm pressing my earpiece and I'm going, she won't get in here, get in here, get in here, you need to sort this out. And she doesn't, it doesn't hear me. And I'm going, oh Christ. So I had to get out of my seat and go over and try and calm the two lads down because they were going at it. Ivan really didn't want to apologise. Michael Healy Ray would not go back on the programme. Until he apologised. Until he apologised. And we're there in Vancouver, about five minutes to air. We're going like, ah, Jesus Christ. 32:32 Two very similar individuals. But why I say that, I mean, I just can't. 32:36 But Ivan doesn't wear a cap. 32:38 No, but, you know... Oh, he does actually occasionally. 32:42 You could have had some Polkhoras who've dealt an awful lot with them down the years. And I've dealt with the two men. And I thought the piece was very... The documentary was very good. It didn't quite give an insight because a few people said to me afterwards that they felt Danny... didn't come across. I know the two men very well. Danny didn't come across well. And I must say my dealings with Danny Healy Ray, he's a far more intelligent man sometimes than his public image projects. And he's a very decent, what I would say, and my parents are from Galway. 33:13 I would have always described him as a very decent country man. He's a solid individual. 33:20 Michael is a tough operator now and a real politician. And I say that not necessarily in a derogatory sense. I wrote a piece once about Danny where I described how I'd had lunch with him in the canteen. And anyone who was his family from the country contacted me about it because I described how he was eating his dinner off his knife. Which is, if you know people from certain parts of the country, sometimes they will eat all the time. But that... I felt illustrated somewhat what he was like. There's no airs and graces about Danny. 33:51 But I thought there were some great insights in it as well. 33:54 At one point, Danny said at the very end, I just thought this went to the heart of an awful lot of things. 33:59 And it was kind of brushed over. He said that he had raised in the run-up to the fuel protests a number of issues to do with Kerry. And he said that Micheál Martin had laughed at him. 34:10 And I felt Danny was expressing that he'd been humiliated in it all. And that Micheál Martin, a man from Cork, was somehow, this was Danny's implication, was somehow treating him in the fashion that others in the media had looked down on him and sought to denigrate him in some ways. If you're Danny Healy Ray and Michael Healy Ray and it all came down to the great look of the documentary makers, it came to a certain point. Michael Healy Ray had been given in a deal, a ministry, a high profile, an increase of his vote. 34:45 Danny Healy Ray's vote had diminished somewhat and he raised that a couple of times in the documentary. What did Danny Healy Ray get out of it? And then it comes up to the crucial moment of the fuel protests And Danny Healy Ray says that Micheál Martin, in his words, was laughing at him in Dáil Éireann when he raised issues to do with the people of Kerry. And I think that went to the heart then of what happened a few weeks later. Because Danny Healy Ray felt, not only had he been hard done by in the deal that brought them into government, he felt the Taoiseach of the country was laughing at him. 35:15 I thought most interestingly, and I thought, J.K. did a good job of trying to pin Michael Healy Ray down. 35:21 If you remember... 35:22 And Michael Healy Ray got very angry in the response, didn't he? Because he was under pressure. 35:26 That told me a lot, right? Because if you remember what Michael Healy Ray said in the Dáil when he gave his resignation speech, he put the blame squarely on Micheál Martin. He did. He said, the leader of the country has let me down or has let the country down. And it's his failure that I'm resigning out of this. 35:42 He was not, Michael Rickey-Leray still has not been able to square that stance on the day he resigned to then go into blame Danny Healy-Ray for all of it. 35:50 The interview that he gave to Jerry O'Donnell on Radio Kerry. 35:53 I wrote what happened that week. And Michael Healy-Ray, to my eyes, is a good politician and an ambitious politician. And I think he's leaving the door open. He's not burnt his bridges and an awful lot of things. But the crucial thing he is... 36:06 Sorry, Gerry Kennelly seems to be of the view that the relationship, funnily enough, between Michael Healy Ray and Simon Harris is so good that there is the potential when Simon Harris becomes seashock that Michael Healy Ray might find his way back. 36:19 Before the break, Simon Harris did an interview with me where he spoke about his tax cuts, which you spoke about here. But buried in that piece, you'll see a line where he says, I'd never say never in politics in relation to Michael Healy Ray. Michael Healy Ray also paid tribute to Simon Harris when he was leaving and he didn't do so with Micheal Martin. He criticised him. But there's a crucial line that he said that I used, we used in our Mail on Sunday headline about what happened in that week where a source close to Michael Healy Ray had said to me that I've never been sacked from anything in my life and I won't be sacked from this. 36:54 He said to his colleagues in the independent benches, Michael Lowry and others, I would have close relationship with a number of those independent TDs who were players that week. Michael Healy Ray repeated that phrase in the documentary the other night. I've never been sacked from anything else. I wrote at the time that emissaries were sent from Micheál Martin's office to Michael Healy Ray, where he was told, if you don't bring along your brother, the deal was for two votes. Again, that's beyond doubt and stood up in that. We had a headline which pointed out the two men had spat in their hands in front of Simon Harris and Michael and Micheál Martin to seal that deal. 37:34 Michael Healy Ray was told, unless you bring along your brother on this, the two votes was the deal, you have to go. And that was left in no doubt. So that was kind of skirted around as well. 37:46 let's see where that leads to for me the documentary was at its most interesting when it kind of scratched at the tensions between the two brothers because there was a reference in that when Danny said oh your man's not willing to give up you know kind of ground when they were deciding to divvy up And if you look at the results in 2024, that man, 18,596 votes for Michael Healy-Ray on the first count. Danny Healy-Ray got 8,600, so a gap of 10,000. So clearly Michael is, you know, the lead, you know, the leader here, right? 38:18 Danny's there, 10 points. So Michael got 24% of the vote. Danny got 10% of the vote. But Michael's surplus got Danny over the line. There was more than two seats there, right? 38:27 And that brings the question, what happens the next time around? See, this is the big thing. I mean, blood, thicker than water, are they going to have to kiss and make up to protect their respective positions? How do they hand over the seats to their children? Now, I think Michael's case, I think Michael probably sees himself been around for a very long time. But Danny is a lot older. And I would imagine Danny is probably looking at either the son or the daughter. 38:50 Probably more likely the daughter too. 38:51 Did I pick this up right? Um... I'd always believed I'd written and I'd known the two men pretty well from an awful long time in Leinster House dealing with them. And I deal with Michael a lot. 39:03 I'd always felt they weren't close in the way I probably would be with my brothers. 39:09 Danny said at some point that he was 15 when the parents' marriage broke down. And did I pick that up right? 39:17 From that point on, Michael and the other siblings were a lot younger. That they lived in separate houses. 39:22 Danny lived with the dad. In Kerry. Kerry. And then Michael, and this was a fascinating story, you know, how roads less traveled and the rest of it, but this story about him going to the United States and giving the option to stay there. So can you imagine if Michael Healy Ray had stayed there, he would have developed the American accent. He would have been able to indulge his passion for guns an awful lot more, probably in the United States. 39:44 He'd be president by now. 39:45 Yeah. 39:46 But I wonder is there that filial link? And that's just, again, I'm gleaning from a documentary and that's what we're discussing. To my ears and eyes, that doesn't really exist. There are people within both households with political ambition. 40:01 And I think that's the real story because whatever about the two brothers, I think their children are more at loggerheads, perhaps. That's what was seen at Kerry County Council in the weeks immediately after all this. 40:12 And I think, you know, Danny's daughter, Maura, gave voice to this. You know, in terms of talking about Michael, you could see there was definitely hurt. You could definitely feel the hurt and the annoyance there, what was said. And genuinely what I thought was, you know, I think one of their main supporters quoted in the documentary said, you know, there have been tensions between the two, but they've sort of kept it within, you know, not in the public domain. Even I think Jackie Healy Ray Jr. I think made the point that, you know, we have tended to keep our family discussions internally. It shouldn't have gone out to the public. 40:43 And that's Jackie, the reference to Jackie, named after his grandfather, who's Michael's son, and his faithful handler, let's put it another way, he works as a special advisor. An heir apparent. He had said in the documentary that I would love to see my own name on a ballot for... 41:03 Is there anything, and I suspect there isn't, to stop perhaps Jackie Healy Ray going on a ticket with his father in the next year? If relations have descended to that point, that is a possibility. And Jackie would be everywhere, and there was comment in Leinster House that the most upset person about everything that happened was Jackie, because he was enjoying doing that job. A good, decent, articulate guy to deal with as well. 41:31 and saw a few things I wrote a piece about that whole mess at the time and I spoke to him on the phone Michael genuinely wasn't it seemed in a headspace to speak much I spoke to him once during the whole thing after the play Jackie very quickly determined one of the people I'd been talking to in Leinster House because I'd used the quote, Mikey was solid as a rock. And Jackie said to me, I want you to carry actions. 42:00 There's only one man in Ireland who calls my father Mikey. 42:03 So I know exactly who you are talking to. So... 42:06 he's astute he's a sharp operator and that could be a possibility that he he runs with his father but I think two veteran and we spoke about them at the start of this section two of the most veteran contributors to that Vincent Brown and Ivan made a point of Michael's ego and I thought that was a team if you look at the amount of time who's the most veteran but Vincent Brown was there 42:25 he's the Terry Pro might be older there is she? 42:30 Jesus John you're in trouble now you're calling them veterans I think they're around a long time but the amount of times Michael talked about himself in the third person you know what I mean or the amount of time I this I that that to me was quite revealing about where you know even that thing of I'm not voting confident in the government I'm voting confidence in me like that shows Jesus like you think very highly of himself and I think he does I think he's a very he's a very courteous man But by God, there's an ego there. And by God, there's a steeliness there. 42:58 See, the other thing is, you know, funny enough, the documentary was very much helped. Gerry Kennelly got lucky by the fact that you had this major rift. 43:07 Interestingly, what sort of documentary would have been without it? 43:09 Absolutely. But you know the other thing, I think if anyone was looking at it and was considering a career in politics, they might have said, Jesus, no way. 43:17 They're obsessed. The amount of time that they actually spend. 43:20 Now, I know we saw Michael Healy Ray shooting his guns and we saw him at one stage painting the gable wall of the house, although he had the headphones on and he's still having the conversations. But this thing, you know, that they... 43:32 They're obsessed and they're available at all hours. The phone is always on. I remember hearing a story before, this might have been broadcast or somewhere else, but of a neighbor of Michael Healy Ray's who couldn't get home from the pub at two o'clock in the morning, ringing Michael and saying, can you come down and collect myself and the wife? And Michael Healy Ray gets up and he goes out and he does it. 43:51 And that may be to expose Danny's lack of success in getting a permit for people who had three or four pints to get home from the pub, which was mentioned in the documentary. 43:59 The documentary as well, yeah. 44:01 We discussed before the break, I think it was with Lise, about the politicians' holidays. 44:06 Yes. 44:06 And I did point out that you won't survive long in Irish politics and you certainly won't survive long in Kerry politics unless that's what you do. Unfortunately, that's the job. And the Healy Rays get great... get great kudos from the public for doing that. But there aren't many long-serving politicians that aren't doing that, who aren't taking phone calls from people at 10 o'clock. I was in the green room at Virgin one night, probably 11 o'clock at night. It was on a bit later for whatever reason, the Tonight Show. 44:37 It used to be on 11th at midnight. 44:38 And Michael was taking calls then to do with the HSE. I mean, that's what they do. But I would say an awful lot of rural politicians are doing the same thing. 44:47 Okay. 44:48 Actually, given that they left on the basis of the fuel protests issue at the time, how much fear do you reckon is there in government at the moment that the fuel protests are going to re-emerge in the autumn? We're recording here on Friday morning, Pierre Stardieu, Sinn Féin out this morning demanding the immediate recall of the Dáil to discuss this issue, but it seems that there are a lot of anxious backbenchers in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael putting pressure on government that you cannot allow the excise duties return to the levels they're at because with all of Trump's idiocy in relation to the Iran war, we're going to be seeing the price of a litre of fuel back over to euro if we don't have a continued reduction of the excises. 45:34 I think there's definitely, again, we've, like my colleagues, Daniel Murray and Megan O'Brien have been on this for the last couple of weeks and are writing about it this week for us in the Business Post. 45:43 you know, the temperature is definitely heating up and I think there's a nervousness around, particularly on the backbench, is that, you know, they're going to have to, if they don't move on it, if they don't delay or they don't kind of introduce further measures, that they're the ones who are going to get absolutely monstered by the Michael Collinses of this world and the Michael Fitzmaurises of this world. 46:03 The reason the government put... 46:05 It's stock against going against Mercosur because as was said to me, they did not want to open the door to allow another 15 Michael Fitzmaurises going to the Dáil. It's the same in the fuel protest. They don't want to open the door to allow rural constituency or the vote base for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to be obliterated across the country. 46:22 It's difficult because the amount of money it took to get the streets unlocked in April was galling. 46:28 Almost a billion euro to get the streets unlocked. And for what? For no political gain, really. Literally, that's a heavy price to pay. 46:35 It only seemed to be reactive to the pressure. 46:37 Yeah. The difficulty, I think, for both Simon Harris, Jack Chambers, Micheál Martin is this. 46:42 is that it's a bit like trying to appease the Brexiteers in the UK. It'll never be enough. No matter how much money you put on the table, no matter what you do, it will never be enough because these people are now galvanized to say there's a wedge issue here that they can attack the government on. And, you know, this arbiter of who are the real champions of rural Ireland or the holiers or all of this sort of stuff. The only thing that went, I think, in the government's favour was that the protesters were so disparate and there were a couple of, you know, there were question marks over the legitimacy, I think, of some of them and some of the leaders back in April. 47:14 But I do think there is a high potential for disruption around the EU presidency and on the streets of Dublin in particular. 47:21 Well, I'll reveal all on Sunday what's going to happen. I don't want to reveal now, John. This will be out after Sunday. 47:27 If you reveal it, people will need more detail in the Irish Mail on Sunday. 47:31 Yeah, absolutely. Well, you can read what's going on on the public airways pretty well, you two veterans. 47:37 I'm younger than both of you. 47:40 I know, yeah, but it's not about... John, you're as great as I am. My loop says I'm five years younger than my actual age, by the way. But you can be damn sure there won't be any of those reinstatement of excise between now and Christmas. That isn't going to happen. The only problem they have now is almost a technical issue. 47:58 In relation to the need to do a motion in the Dáil in September. 48:01 The first is due and the first is September, right? Now, if you were to say, okay, we're not bringing up those... those reinstatement of the excise over a period of time between now and Christmas. But you still did it on the 1st of September. Doesn't matter what you do politically. And I think it's more than the fuel protesters as well, Danny. You know, if kids go back to school and you go and get a tank of petrol on the 1st of September and it's back over the two euro mark where it was when the fuel protests began, that's going to hit you politically. You've got a budget very early on the 6th of October. 48:33 So now it's a matter of how they deal with this rapidly. 48:37 and again you know it does illustrate an issue that goes on when it comes to holidays that there's no cabinet scheduled next week as far as I know and there's no leaders meeting scheduled as far as I know Michal Martin is down in Cork McSharry they can do all that by Zoom and get that sorted but I predict you're going to see the doll back to deal with that pretty quickly but then that brings us into where do we stop But it comes to, I mean, the excise duty is a huge, huge take. 49:09 Two billion a year, is it? Well, this one has cost, as Danny pointed out, has cost a billion quid. So if you're going to suspend the reinstatement of excise between now and Christmas, what's that going to cost? Is it going to cost the same? 49:21 It's going to impact on Simon Harris's tax package. Yeah. Unless it's sort of a special measure off the books of balance. 49:28 No, we are. We are, by all measures, one of the richest countries on the planet. And we can absorb it, but for how long? 49:36 Okay. Very briefly, just other things. You have a story in the Business Post this week, Daniel, on the website in relation to Fianna Fáil TD Tom Brabison and objecting to housing in Clon Griffin. 49:49 Yeah, so Fianna Fáil TD Tom Brabison appealed a decision by Dublin City Council to permit a 711-unit development in Clongriffin proposed by the LDA. Now, the prospect or the vista of a government TD opposing a major housing development at a time of a major housing crisis ill beholds or doesn't look good, right? Brabison basically says, listen, he says he's insisting he's not standing in the way of housing development and he recognised the need for housing he's just saying the LDA have got it wrong here. The scale, the size, it's just out of keeping with the local area. 50:24 He says, you know, the developer proved difficult to deal with, et cetera, like that. And I'm just quoting from the article here done by my colleague, Oisin Gaffey. I need to say, the LDA did not want to listen to the local community and their genuine concerns. The politics of this is terrible for Fianna Fáil. The politics of this for the government because they have beaten Mary Lou MacDonald and Sinn Féin over the head time and time again for their opposition to major housing projects in Dublin, namely Clonliffe Road in my constituency in Dublin Central. 50:53 So, like I said, it's simple. You know, your government, that's trying to fix a housing crisis. There's a major development that's badly needed on the fringes of the capital city and you have a local TD for local political reasons opposing it. It just looks terrible. 51:08 On the general issue of Mary Lou MacDonald and anyone else opposing housing developments, I don't think they're in the wrong. 51:18 I know that area very well. It's near where I live. 51:22 Clon Griffin, if people aren't from the area, they might know the position you're going through if they're taking the dart to lovely Leafy Malahide for a nice day out in Ghibli's Pub or somewhere like that. They'll see... 51:36 On one side, thousands and thousands of apartments have been put up without shops, without adequate schools, as far as I can see. Everyone's piling into one newly built train station, by the way. To the other side, there's open fields between there and Port Marnock Golf Club. And they're all going to be built on. Now, I think Tom Brabison has raised a number of issues. Danny, the mail blocked me out from the business post, which is always a bad sign. We're a highbrow, we're a highbrow. The first sign of being locked out of my office. 52:08 But what is the figure on single occupancy apartments there? I saw there's about 300, isn't it? 52:13 Yeah, so there's 304 one-bed units. 52:16 There is an issue, and it's a tourney matter with people, and I've spoken to politicians about it. Nearly half of that development are for single occupancy apartments. 52:26 I'm sorry, it could be for a couple. One bed could be a couple. 52:29 But in actuality, what ends up happening... is local authorities take control of those apartment blocks. And single occupancy often go to single men. And that is an issue that people bring about where we've been talking about sociological phenomena in Ireland, that there's a concentration of a local authority housing in that area. The local politician has represented the views of And I don't think, I'm not sure if Clon Griffin has much room for much more development in the fashion that it's getting, where there's huge open spaces to the west of the city, to the north of the city, and all over Ireland. 53:13 Something that strikes me as odd when you say that it's not getting these shops and the schools and the rest of it. I thought we had dealt with that issue in places like Adamstown, that everything was built in Adamstown on a very scaled, integrated. And if you see, if you're coming on the train, The Cork Dublin train, when you come through Adamstown, you see the schools, you see the shops and all the rest of it. It took longer, I think, for it to come together in the way that was wanted because of the crash in 2008, 2009. But I thought the models were in place for doing all of the things at the same time. 53:44 And we're not having arguments as well about what's planned for Dunsink and that there doesn't seem to be joined up thinking as into the provision of facilities to go with a plan for housing. 53:53 Yeah, and I just think, like, while it might have worked in Adamstown eventually, whether it's consistently, whether that's consistency of delivery, all these new units is there. Because I think, as John says, I mean, you go through these, and even if you look down along where the Phoenix Park racecourse is now, there's new apartment blocks there being built. 54:09 Are the schools there? Are the shops there? Are the, you know, are the green spaces for people to play, you know, for kids to go out and play in going to be there? But John made the point about the concentration of, say, social or, you know, kind of the housing bodies or the state kind of taking up kind of units. 54:26 We've seen it around our area again, Glasnevin, Drunk Hunter area, where apartment blocks have been built. 54:31 major developments the Smurford site is one in Drumcondra not one apartment in that development is going on the open market they've already been hoovered up because of by housing bodies and that's causing a great deal of angst locally as you can imagine and that is a pattern that you see repeating itself all over Dublin so there is those concerns but I still go back to the fundamental point of you know in an emergency, drastic things have to happen. And I certainly think that, you know, Tom Robinson has a job, so he's a local representative. I just think it looks terrible that a government TD is going in and opposing... Tom is a quiet man in Leinster House. 55:09 He was one of the authors of the Fiddle Fall presidential report, which I got in advance, I must point out. Um, But he wasn't the person who gave it to me. It's just going to happen. My vision of him is getting out the revolving doors of the front door of Leinster House before I'd even gotten in them and running away from me. So I'm not defending him for reasons of being a contact, but... 55:36 If you look at the quotes he says in this Business Post piece that, you know, listen, it's a housing crisis, but just throwing houses up wherever you like is not the solution to it. If you look at the development, say, of the underground in the UK and housing, the underground was built first and an awful lot of the expansion of the west of London was done on the basis of underground lines that were built out. That was the great, Harold Macmillan's great building boom was very much around the underground. 56:05 When the metro is finished, you can build houses along that and that's a major central idea around the metro. But in the meantime, just throwing up thousands of houses around one dart station on a dart line that is limited in the number of trains it can use to go through the three stations in town, Connolly, Tara Street and Pierce Street, it's not viable. And like, we haven't necessarily got a housing problem, we've got a transport problem. But I think a local rep is perfectly within his rights to point out there's a city centre there with thousands of vacant spaces above shops that I think Robert Watt is going to go a long way towards dealing with and he's moved into that area. 56:49 But there can be things done rapidly, Danny, in a crisis that don't necessarily involve throwing up apartments in one concentrated area. 56:58 We're going to leave it. That was great. Thank you very much, Daniel McConnell, editor of the Business Post, John Lee, executive editor for the Irish Mail on Sunday. Thank you to my production team here. John Deasy will be with us for the subscription edition, which will be available to subscribers from Sunday morning. And then Mary McKeown and myself will be back with Path to Power America next Wednesday. So until then, for me, Matt Cooper, thank you for being with us.