Ellen Coyne

hands-on policing strategy taken.

However, I think that it really has left its mark on politics in general because people have learnt that the government does respond to more aggressive protest tactics.

And I think what kind of took the government aback was the fact that even people who were deeply uncomfortable with some of the tactics, the fact that there were what some people described as illegal blockades used

The empathy that people had for a very strong anti-government protest group was quite strong.

And I think as Louise articulated, if you're talking about things that affect your household budget, I mean, the fact that energy prices have been rising is the long tail of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We're still dealing with that.

So the consequences of that cost of living crisis were still being felt at the point in time at which the government's tried to unravel the last round of one-off measures.

That 300,000 people in arrears figure that we've heard all week actually predates the war on Iran.

So I think that there is no escaping the fact that this is going to be a bitterly difficult winter for people.

Even if we woke up in the morning and all of a sudden Iran and America had come to the world's most efficient peace deal, we would still be feeling the effects of this because the infrastructure damage is so significant in the Middle East that it will take months to unravel this, even in the best case scenario.

And unfortunately, with the continued failing of the peace talks, we're still having to consider the worst case scenario as well.

Well, there's actually been conversations about this going on in government for a long time.

As far back as December 2024, there was actually a plan to phase out commercial accommodation by March of this year.

That was more, though, from the perspective of a crisis of accommodation supply.

This one is kind of different.

The government is trying to bridge the gap between what is morally right and fiscally prudent.

There's a sense in government that

The scale of Ukrainian supports are unsustainable and you kind of touched on it there.

I think one of the things that has nearly gone against Ukrainian people is that they've integrated so well and so many of them are working.

The government thinks that that is politically unpalatable, that it's a threat to social cohesion to have some people effectively living in rent free accommodation when they could be working in the same small business or a small company as an Irish person who's paying rent.