Sinead O'Sullivan

So people will say, well, short-term thinking, short-term solutions, get to the next voting block or election.

Yeah.

throw a bit of money at people.

And we absolutely do this.

There's no doubt about the fact that we pay for votes essentially, along with many other things.

But there's another framing that I want to use here because I actually think that this is potentially more useful for understanding the problem.

And by the way, we want to understand the problem to eventually solve it.

So we're not just hurlers on the ditch here throwing shit at the wall.

We're actually trying to figure out

What is the actual problem we're trying to solve for?

And so another way of looking at this is, in its most basic form, that the government can do two things.

It can build things and it can spend money.

And, you know, in my kind of more formal frameworks, I say that there are two mechanisms that are both required within an economy.

One is a coordination mechanism.

And usually it is the state, although recently we can talk about that perhaps later, the markets have done that more.

But there has to be some sort of mechanism for coordinating all of this activity.

The other thing downstream of that, after it's been coordinated, is that you have to distribute the proceeds of this economy.

And what we got really good at doing, and okay, let's talk about what Ireland's good at doing.

Yeah.

Well, let's get back to the fuel protests and this three month mini solution, right?