Brigid Laffan

speaker

206 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 6d ago

Brigid Laffan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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Brendan O'Connor · The Newspaper Panel · 20 Sep 2026 podcast

So I think I mean I think the French is w uh France is one of those countries that has managed to protect its cultural life better than many other countries and the French engage in a lot of these different kinds of schemes in terms of also payment for for for uh for creative people.

So I think it's worth a try.

I uh whether it's purely symbolic remains to be seen.

It it can range from about eight thousand to the very expensive programmes like medicine and veterinary.

Veterinary is about fifty thousand a year.

So it but but it's a lot of people.

So we plenty of plenty money to s to spend

Yeah, it's i i uh the big challenge for Ireland is it appears to me that government goes to the fiscal lever all of the time now.

It's seen as the way of managing very difficult trade offs and

In the end, underlying all of this is the biggest sing one of the biggest single strategic issues for Ireland is to get the hell out of fossil fuels as quickly and as effectively as possible, because we're we're hostage to all of the things that are happening outside the island.

And

i i this idea that government expenditure is out of control, that limits are are that they can't maintain the limits that that they establish, the Fiscal Council is banging that drum and has been banging it now.

So how we how we manage to get trade offs back into Irish politics but it's extremely difficult when you're governing at a time of

potential uh not potential discontent but but a lot of opposition in the society

And and populism.

So the day the the trade offs are the difficult trade offs are never put before the people.

So I think in the Irish context of a very generalist civil service and a lack of technical skills within the civil service, with big infrastructure projects and digitisation, it's almost automatic now you go outside.

So I firstly I would say chapeau to Albert Dolan, that's a really excellent development.

He's shedding light on Irish public expenditure.

Also uh if Ireland

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