Aisling Moloney

And I think, you know, in press conferences since then and in moments of, you know, interrogation around the topic, he has conceded that the tone should have been different in respect of those hardworking men and women that the backbenchers have kind of really gone to him about.

And, you know, like...

You're talking about some of these members of Fianna Fáil engaging with some of these protesters and hauliers before the protests took place.

So, you know, the week before Easter Sunday, all that week, there were people in Fianna Fáil engaging with some of these protesters and getting that message and seeing that they needed help.

Seeing that some of these people were really broken and at breaking point to a point where they were going to do something that wasn't expected, normal and did go outside of the bounds of regular protest and that they were at that point.

And that message didn't seem to get to Micheál Martin or didn't seem to resonate with him.

And he's paying for it now with an ultimate question of his leadership.

Well, we were on tenterhooks nearly, counting up the numbers that the government had with them for this confidence motion.

And the numbers to be counted are the independents.

And so all eyes were very much on Danny Healy-Ray and Michael Healy-Ray, who was a junior minister, on how they would vote.

And I suppose the consensus was that Michael Healy-Ray is going to vote with the government because he is a sitting junior minister in the Department of Agriculture, an area that he's talked so much about enjoying working in.

But the question was, if Danny Healy-Ray went against the government, were they a two-for-one deal?

Was it two votes for the government for one junior ministry?

And so that was the big question because Danny was very much out questioning government, saying that he didn't want to support them in the confidence motion.

And then we heard that

Michael Ely Ray was kind of trying to assuage some supporters and had come out and government were under the impression that he was going to vote for them throughout the weekend.

But then on Monday, he told a kind of closer amount of supporters and certainly on Tuesday morning, there was rumblings that he was going to vote against.

But the climax of this really only came when Michael Ely Ray stood up in the Dáil and said, I'm voting no confidence and I'm resigning as minister.

And I think one of the really interesting pictures of the kind of mess of this week in government is the government chief whip, Mary Butler, sitting down on the steps, the carpeted steps in the chamber, talking to Mike Ely Ray sitting on the seat.

And that's when...