Claire Byrne

Because there are those who will say, well, this is a man who stood by his principles, who was courageous and who walked out when he needed to.

There are others who will say, well, Michael Healy-Ray, when the going gets tough, he's gone back down to Kerry, back to his constituency.

And he's not fit for national politics and he's not fit for government.

So where do you stand?

I would imagine, Marion, you're under similar pressure from your constituents in relation to what happened last week.

Yeah, I'm just sorry now to cut a question, but I'm wondering, did you ever consider voting against the government?

What about the wisdom, Marion, of spending half a billion euro on a situation which, you know, was driven by people who put tractors and trucks on the roads and prevented others from going about their business?

Are you comfortable with that?

Well, that's the risk that Michael Healy-Ray and Danny Healy-Ray took, which is why some people are critical of them today.

Marianne, I'm going to leave it there, but thank you for joining us this morning.

In a moment I'll come to Tracey Carroll but just back Sean Defoe to you for a moment because I want to talk to you about just briefly the opposition in all of this because we don't have a united opposition in relation to fuel, do we?

All right, Sian, thank you very much.

That's Sian Defoe and I want to come to Tracey Carroll now who's been listening to all of that.

Tracey, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

Your mother to Willow and you missed an appointment, didn't you, last week because of the protest.

You felt trapped in your home.

The protesters said, Tracey, that they were doing this for everybody.

So they were doing it for you and they were doing it for Willow.

So, Tracey, when you heard Michael Healy-Way saying that he's listened to the workers of Ireland, the people who've soldiered with him over the years, and that he's always looked on himself as the gauge of the people of Ireland, and he saw people in tears at those protests and knew that he couldn't continue in government, what do you think?

You know, is that the lesson that we learn from this?