Daniel Murray

Yeah.

He's certainly calming us today.

He is again in this piece today.

But I mean, if we do have collective PTSD over COVID, it wasn't helped during the week when we saw the likes of Colm Henry, Sam McConkie and Luke O'Neill all out on the airwaves trying to brief us.

So that certainly sent a shiver up my spine.

I was looking over my shoulder at one stage, wondering if Paul Reed and Tony Holohan were going to appear from behind me.

It does appear from Luke's piece that this is kind of the reverse of COVID in some ways.

There is a higher mortality rate.

It's much more deadly, but a much lower transmission rate.

And the WHO saying that this is not going to turn into an epidemic, nor mind a pandemic.

But more importantly, Luke O'Neill saying that it isn't either.

Yes.

So very interesting story from John Mooney, who has a long track record of breaking these kind of stories.

And Verona Murphy, so the Count Corla of the Oireachtas, was given a rare national security briefing earlier this year after Guard Intelligence uncovered a sophisticated Chinese influence operation attempting to target her.

So there isn't a huge amount of detail on the operation itself, but it comes at a very interesting time just ahead of Ireland's European presidency, where our influence, obviously at a regional level and an international level, is much more prominent.

And when a lot of issues that affect China will be up for discussion from trade and tariffs and protectionism and competitiveness across the EU.

The one thing I will say is that, I mean, if the Chinese are trying to influence Irish politics, they might be better looking somewhere else than the Cian Corla's office.

As brilliant a Cian Corla as Verona Murphy is.

has turned out to be kind of Dáil procedures and rules and regulations might be all that they managed to get in there.

And according to this story, this has been a multi-year operation with, you know, a sleeper agent.