Mary Regan

Person we've heard a lot about this week, the ordinary decent protester, the ordinary decent farmer, did he?

And we'll get to the Fianna Fáil would-be heave that may not transpire in a minute.

But let's just unpack the last couple of days because there's a lot to unpack.

The no confidence motion, like usually these no confidence motions, they take the spark out of things, they take the heat out of things, the government rallies together and that sort of settles something for a while.

So they usually have the sort of counter effect that opposition might be trying to achieve from them.

Not so this time.

This confidence motion, although the government won't

won it, hasn't taken the heat out of things.

So let's just look at the Healey Rays and their decision first of all.

It was one of those sort of very dramatic days I felt where as journalists in the press gallery we could see a lot of things going on down in the Dáil chamber.

So maybe take us through how the government came to find out about the Healey Rays decision, how they exerted massive drama as much as they could out of how they pulled out of government.

Well

And just a few minutes earlier, a backbencher in Fianna Fáil was looking over the shoulder of Michael Healy-Wray and saw his scribbles on his piece of paper that he was preparing for his speech, saw his line written there that he cannot support the government in this motion.

And that backbencher did their duty and passed on the information to Mary Butler, which was the first...

The chief whip heard of it.

Meanwhile, the Taoiseach was over in his office and didn't know what was going on.

Still deep in conversation with Mark Carney.

And Michael Healyway couldn't hand in his resignation letter.

And I was wondering, could he not have maybe slipped it under the floor or something, or under the door?

But I think this was seen, as many people in government, as a kind of bad way to do business.