Jim Power

They certainly pissed me off.

We had these protesters arguing about

that they were the real workers of Ireland.

We're the ones paying all the bills.

We're the ones feeding the country.

OK, I found that in itself pretty, as I say, it did piss me off, but obviously had the same impact on Varadkar because in that podcast, Varadkar basically had a go at rural Ireland and said that what's in the interest of farmers and the agriculture industry is by and large not in the interest of Ireland as a nation.

So this has kicked off a significant political storm, I think, within Fine Gael particularly.

There's a couple of reasons here.

Number one, Fine Gael typically would have received a lot of support over the years from rural farmers.

So that's one thing.

And with by-elections coming up in Galway and elsewhere, that's important.

And I would say that Simon Harris is probably holding his head in his hands at the moment and said to Leo, would you ever shut the hell up?

You know, what is this intervention about?

That's one aspect.

But the second aspect is, you know, why would Leo Fratker turn around and sort of create this sort of crisis?

tension between rural Ireland and the rest of the country I mean he was arguing that you know the urban Ireland and Dublin particularly that's where most of the taxes are paid and that's because it's where the largest population is where most workers are so obviously urban areas will generate more employment and taxation than rural Ireland but it's a stupid sort of argument to make that actually

that people in rural Ireland should just shut up and accept this reality?

Chris, that's a sort of assuming that rural Ireland is dominated by farming and agriculture.

It's not.

Okay, farming is important.