Craig Hughes

And they're being boxed into kind of making these early promises.

And of course, the Department of Education, and this is something I was writing about a couple of weeks ago.

So Minister of Public Expenditure, Jack Chambers, has told all government departments now that they're going to have to pay for the overspending of their colleagues, which has caused quite alarm.

Yeah, and so we know that the spending is going to increase by about 6% a year.

So that's the plan, at least.

It's already higher than what the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council want them to do.

So look, there's lots of risks if you go beyond that long term, but also in the short term when you come to inflation.

But it was interesting talking to a few cabinet ministers about this in recent weeks.

They're kind of saying, hold on a second.

And one government department overspends their budget and the rest of us are being penalised.

So doesn't that create a kind of a perverse counter incentive not to stick to your budget if you know you're going to be bailed out by your colleagues?

This is Gerard Colvin writing in the Mail on Sunday today.

And I was making a similar point to my own column in the Daily Mail yesterday that, you know, at a time when there is, you know, growing unease with the government, the largest opposition party are really struggling to capitalise on that, you know, in Galway West.

They are, but they're shedding support.

I mean, if you go back to 2020's general election, they were on about 24% of first preference votes.

That slid to 19% last time out.

And I think they have a real issue, Sinn Féin, in terms of the identity of the party now.

And I think that the by-election in Dublin Central will be very interesting because...

if the Social Democrats candidate, Daniel Ennis, wins that election, all of a sudden they'll be saying, hold on, this left unity business isn't very beneficial to us, is it?

And it'll be interesting to see in the context of Gerry the Monk Hutch, if he could outlast Janice Boylan, the Sinn Féin candidate, and then some of her transfers are suddenly going there.