Ainle Ó Cairealláin

You sort of hit the nail on the head there.

If I was a solar panel engineer, I would be putting solar panels on someone's house somewhere.

And same way, like if you were going somewhere, you would be doing something got to do with building or whatever.

It just so happens that this is the field that I had my expertise in.

And I think that the main point there, like when I think back about the last three years of genocide in Palestine,

people have become more aware of what's happening in Palestine and Ireland more than ever before, even though we've always had this longstanding connection and strong sense of solidarity with Palestinians.

But there are a lot more people under the umbrella now than there were before the genocide because they became more aware of Palestine.

A lot more people went onto the streets.

But one really common thing that I've kind of been asked or that I've felt from people is this sense of helplessness because you're seeing what's happening on a TV show

And you're going to marches and the marches are important to play a really important role in bringing more people into the fold in terms of hearing people speaking and hearing Palestinians speak and getting a sense from people who are steeped in this work about what the latest news is and so on.

I think they're a really important purpose of the marches and so on.

But at the same time, a lot of people still feel very helpless because it feels like

Palestinians are being murdered we're marching but it feels like we could be doing more and the thing for me is to realise that we all have a certain set of skills and a certain set of abilities and talents and we all have the ability to use those

And when you start to use your talents and your abilities towards some end, it doesn't have to be Palestine, it could be anything.

Sure, sure, sure.

When you just decide, I do have a certain set of skills here and this is how I can use them to the best of my ability, then that feeling of helplessness and powerlessness goes away.

And actually what happens then is you start to feel empowered and other people start to feel empowered because if I think about the gym project, it's not just me.

There's a whole team there now of people who came up and said,

I'm a musician, is there anything I can do here?

And then boom, then they can come to Ballast and then they can teach music to the kids.