Aisling Meehan

You know, I suppose since the 1960s, you know, Ireland's focus has been on attracting foreign direct investment up until the mid-90s.

You know, that worked relatively well.

And then, you know, rather than cooling the international investment, they ranked it up.

And I think rural Ireland is just feeling left behind.

And obviously, then we had, you know, the Ukrainians and a lot of them were housed in the Western Seaboard.

And the government offered lucrative contracts to hoteliers to put them up in communities.

And then they were deprived disproportionately of economic tourism for their survival.

They were, but I mean, it ties into another article this year today about like payments, you know, that they're finally trying to get the hotels back and get the Ukrainians to move out of the hotels.

You know, there's been a mass population explosion.

40% of employed young people between 20 and 35 now live at home with their parents.

When you compare this with Germany and France where there's 12% and in Sweden it's 2%.

So in, there was, I suppose, it was a bubbling up of resentment and anger

about like rural Ireland, especially in the Western seaboard, that they were getting forgotten about.

Yeah, I think it's important to come in and just say like farmers are fighting for their survival here.

And I think that piece has been missed fundamentally.

You know, with the spring that's gone ahead, and I know you say every year there's different crises, but, you know, we can weather the storm, you know, be it dairy farmers or whatever, we're price takers.

But like between the price of fertiliser, the price of diesel, you know, it was said that how do farmers, you know, fix problems?

They work harder.

But actually what happens here is the harder you work, the worse, the deeper you get into the problem here because it's costing you more to actually work with the price of fuel, etc.

So they're absolutely fighting for the survival.