Sean Defoe

Patrick O'Donovan, as you say, I mean, the line arguably of the debate yesterday was when Ivana Bacik was criticising him and said, goodbye, Viktor Orban, hello, Patrick O'Donovan, for his stance on media freedom and media rights, which got a laugh even from the Taoiseach in the tall chamber and tells you maybe where the mood is on that.

And Simon Harris himself slapping down Patrick O'Donovan's suggestion the Commission and the man should be investigating the media is really all you need to know on that.

No, I think that was pretty clear yesterday.

They were all voting against the government but voting against

In different ways and with different solutions to it.

And even Jed Nash, the Labour TD, who had so much difficulty on with you the other day explaining how they would have ended the blockade, said the opposition has to do better to avoid things like this.

Obviously, people don't feel they are getting proper representation through their TDs or through their unions.

And they had took this this protest then to go on the streets.

and shut the country down.

If you look at the different packages that people are offering, I mean, Sinn Féin, talking big about their getting rid of the carbon tax, and also there's energy credits, etc.

The likes of Labour and Social Democrats mainly focusing on energy credits.

And then you have people for profit coming out with somewhere between 5 and 6.7 billion euro package, which just would entirely sink any surplus that the government had for this year.

So it is split, it is diverse, and it is one that I think if you were looking to

you know, a united opposition that could take down the government to come out of this debate yesterday.

That's absolutely not what we got.

What is interesting, actually, some people in Fianna Fáil trying to put a happy spin on this today, saying that actually they wonder if the departure of the Healey Rays will improve cohesion in the government because they won't have to go out defending Michael Healey Ray having a different position to some of his other ministers.

And in fact, one cabinet minister telling me this morning when I asked him his reaction and all he said was good riddance.