Jim Power

this crisis is having a negative impact on anybody.

And if government was to be consistent about this and to step in and actually compensate everybody who's out of pocket as a result of this, well, you know, you're creating...

an incredible hole in the public finances.

And it just feeds into the whole narrative about the inability to control spending.

I don't think Pascal Donoghue would have presided over this.

I think Fianna Fáil have reverted to their populist sort of politics of old.

And I also think that Simon Harris, as a Minister for Finance, is also a populist.

He does not have, I believe, what it takes to be

a strong-minded finance minister who will do the right thing rather than the popular thing.

So I really worry about the longer-term consequence of this, I have to say, because it creates this precedent.

And, you know, after, and I think you mentioned in the last podcast, after the financial crash back in 2007 and 8, the bailing out of the banks, then the response to COVID, then the response to the Ukraine crisis, and now the response to the Iranian crisis.

So

Every crisis that happens, government is being asked to actually step in and fork out money.

This is not an infinite pot of money.

And people should remember that every hundred million that's spent in bailing people out of this crisis, which was caused by Donald Trump, not by the Irish government, means there is less money available for other stuff.

So there is a huge opportunity cost here.

That is the implication of this.

Yeah, it is.

Got me thinking.

I read a piece by Stuart Kirk in the Financial Times at the weekend who was talking about his career in trading.