Pat Kenny

Is this a mindset in government that you employ third parties for everything so that the book doesn't really stop at the minister's desk, at the politician's desk?

So who are we to lecture anyone about competitiveness?

It stops somewhere else.

So what do we need to do?

I mean, first of all, we have to have this conversation that we're having now in a larger forum.

As I say, given we're so expensive, we can't really lecture anybody on competitiveness when we have electricity prices, which are so horrendously high here.

And it's very hard to understand why, you know, there are EU rules about competitiveness and if we're buying power in from elsewhere, the auction price and so on.

It's a complicated system, but it should be reformed.

Everything took a turn in their favor when Trump came to power.

By the way, on the front of the Business Post, it's interesting, the average Irish homeowner now a millionaire.

Why was that so important to their current freedom?

Good news for some.

So, no, I mean, you can be a millionaire in terms of your house and you can't afford to buy a car.

Now, the other parallel, I suppose, is that if you're buying the stuff that you need right now, because we don't have proper undersea surveillance, we don't have surveillance of our skies, and we're buying this equipment, you really need to think in terms of insurance.

Why do we buy insurance in case the house goes on fire?

We hope it never will, but we do insure against that possibility.

And defence spending needs to be along those lines.

Correct.

The thing that may never happen, and we may seem to be wasting money, but you don't think your fire insurance is wasted money.

It links into the story in the front of The Sunday Times.