Austin Hughes

The EU had proposed to reduce that from eight years to six or seven.

Pharma lobbied the Irish government and probably proposed

partly spooked by the threat of tariffs as well.

The government publicly opposed the EU moves.

The EU backed down on this.

Now, the way the Irish Times story suggests is that this is down to the lobbyists.

But if you think about the government's situation, not to actually support or to oppose the EU measures in this regard would have risked killing the golden goose that keeps the public finances rolling in so healthy.

And in that regard, it may not be the lobbyists.

It may be just a very acute awareness on the part of government that really the health of the pharma industry is the health of the Irish economy.

So in that sense, it probably was common sense rather than persuasive powers of lobbyists that resulted in this outcome.

All done.

They're trying to support the Irish economy as early as possible now, so hopefully we can... Of course, like everyone else, I'll discover Christmas Eve that there's somebody really important I've forgotten, but that's the joy of Christmas.

That was first on the list.

And sorry, I mean, I checked with Santa.

You know, there's a few issues around the naughty element this year, Joe.

But we'll talk about that another time.

I don't want to sound too upbeat after that intro.

Indeed.

Have you ever been to Prague?

Several times, yeah.