Emma McEvoy

Thanks, Clare.

And thanks very much for having me on.

There's a significant amount more spending to be done.

And while President Trump might like inflation, it's really not helping the budget for the European presidency at

This is going to be probably our most expensive presidency or hosting the presidency in years.

Like in 2013, we hosted, we hosted it for 51 million.

And now we're looking at a figure of 300 million.

And I suppose the difference would be, and it all kind of comes down to it, heard of that budget now is going to be going on security and defense, and that's going to take up the majority of it.

Things that we didn't have to look at in 2013 that we have to look at now, um, in relation to counter-terrorism,

counter drone capabilities, additional protection for heads of government, ministers, EU officials, additional guarded deployments.

And then we have other bills for staffing, administration, conference and events, building and infrastructure.

Bills that we probably didn't see before.

In 2013, we were really in an austere time and we spent a lot of the events in Dublin Castle or we hosted them in Brussels.

where this time around now, we are looking to have events all across the island of Ireland, all across Ireland.

And even one of our first big events we'll have with President Ursula von der Leyen, that will take place in Cork.

So that has significantly increased the budget.

And as you mentioned there, free transport.

The contract for the delivery of transport for the high-level events is quite high.

That is 6 million.

even when you look into that, like that's quite a figure.