Jack Horgan-Jones

Instead, they're at home, as you say, defending emotion of confidence, putting emotion of confidence in themselves.

Voting through financial resolutions to enable, frankly, enormous cost of living package that was rumoured to be in the tens of millions and turned out being more than 500 million in total.

And trying to count the size of their own majority.

So if you wanted to just quickly express the impact of the political fallout,

of the week of disruption from protests and blockades last week.

That sums it up pretty neatly.

They're nowhere near where they thought they would be.

They're damaged, they're dented.

Their internal cohesion, I suppose, is in question to some extent.

And they're very much on the defensive, on the back foot.

Yeah, and I suspect that if he does end up voting confidence in the government, he'll take it right down to the wire.

I wouldn't be expecting any missives from Danny Healy-Ray as to his voting intention.

And anyone who heard his interview with Radio Kerry, with Gerry O'Sullivan of Radio Kerry, yesterday could be left in no doubt as to the depth of his discomfort and displeasure with how the government handled things.

And indeed, that's a discomfort that extends to Michael Healy-Ray, who last week was making comments that were

in the round support of the protesters, while he did stop short of endorsing the blockades, I think that this speaks to, you know, the nature of a government that is propped up by independents.

There is no question, I think, that every independent minister will be voting in support of the government.

But we have seen all of Danny Healey-Reay, Gillian Toole and Barry Heelan vote against the government, if memory serves, on less important measures during this dull term.

Look, you know, there's no question of the government falling on this, but, you know, their support from what is nominally within their own ranks, I think will be a litmus test of the difficulty of its position and how damaged it has been by the last week or so.

So they haven't signalled their intention as of yet, you're correct to say, that they were, if my memory serves, the only opposition party to vote against the excise cuts that were announced only three weeks ago.

And the government sought to put some emphasis on that at the time, saying that Sinn Féin was calling for excise cuts, but then voted against them.