Fionnán Sheahan
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Whether that takes the form of... This is the way the debate's becoming really noisy at the moment because if you remember before...
This government said we're not going to do one-off measures.
They're not sustainable.
The ESRI previously came out and said that one-off measures like energy credits aren't sustainable.
They kind of almost backtracked saying actually they would help.
They would actually help in this particular energy crisis if it continues and you have the opposition continually hammering them on this.
And on top of that, you have this unfortunate thing that was raised in the Dáil at the moment.
So if we go back a little bit, we're talking about
a 9 billion euro surplus and on the one hand the public expenditure saying it's going to be a tighter pot, rein your spending.
Government departments have now effectively been given a 1.5% penalty for their budget for next year to make up for that overspend, that bailout effectively unless they find savings between now and October and then in the last day or two you had this University of Kerry bike shed
sort of debacle where it cost £127,000.
And you have a department, like a department of public spending saying, a department of no saying, no, you can't do this.
And you have a minister of finance and an energy minister under huge pressure to spend more on the budget.
And then something like this comes out.
And I know it may seem small fry.
Part of it's the procurement issues in this country, you could argue.
Part of it was that, you know, how high up the chain did this get, the government departments.
But it's just...
It just feels like we're on this.
Yes, on the one hand, you have the Department of Education overrun, which came to light maybe about two months ago now as it was emerging.