Alan Barrett

And I mean, Alison read out one of the headlines there was this notion of the Fine Gael TDs putting pressure for largesse in the budget.

So we began this discussion today from memories.

This was like a long time ago, talking about AI.

and the disruption that was causing.

And I think there are a lot of vulnerabilities in the Irish economy at the moment, the world economy and the Irish economy in particular.

And I think people like me have begun to really, really worry that we are now seeing things happening in a sort of a drift of discussion that mirrors a little bit around the sort of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 period.

And the comparison is in the 2006, 7, 8, that was the sort of the height of the Celtic Tiger.

So we thought there was no problem that arose that money didn't solve.

And we had a general election in 2000, which was remarkable for the extent of which the promises that were made.

So Fianna Fáil, in a sense, get a lot of blame for this.

OK, but there was plenty of other people that were urging as much spending as possible.

We're now in a situation where obviously there is a lot of money flowing into the economy, but a lot of us worry that this could be transitory.

We don't know how long this corporation tax largesse is going to last.

And I mean, generally, if you're looking at economies, when you see numbers that look really, really weird, it's never a good thing.

And for an economy like Ireland, where 35% of our tax stake is now through corporation tax, that's a complete outlier with most countries.

And it looks really, really strange.

And it raises questions about the sustainability of what's happening.

And so even when Niall sort of made the point there, I mean, you actually sort of said that it was, you know, these were the people who cared about Ireland, you know, or cared about the people of Ireland.

Like, believe me, I care about the people of Ireland, too.

And the thing I worry about most is when this happens,