Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What insights did Mary Regan share about the Sunday Independent interview?
Mary, what jumped out at you or what he was saying across all platforms?
Yeah, I thought it was interesting. There were very different interviews, found out different things in reading all of them. Niamh Horan in the Sunday Independent has an interview with Ed Walsh. The first thing that struck me, it's probably more sort of frivolous than anything else, but how he met Donald Trump, his great pal Donald Trump.
And he said he was, you know, he's a young man in business, not very successful, a kind of a struggle, he said at that point. But he paid 220,000 a year to join a golf club and made it his business to play around with Donald Trump, then made it his business to beat him. And from then on in, Trump respected him.
But it kind of highlighted to me the sort of transactional nature of the relationships and how they develop, you know, at this at this level. But then sticking with that theme, he kind of talks about Ireland and the importance of the US relationship with Ireland and how Ireland is in a very good position compared to other European countries and its closeness to the US.
But he says that, you know, Ireland needs to, as he put it in his own words, you know, stick, stay in its lane, stay in the lane where you are. and the road ahead will be smooth. So there was a sort of warning there as we take up the EU Council presidency.
He is talking about regulation, saying, you know, if Ireland does anything during the EU presidency, it's to reduce the sort of regulation and red tape, you know, to doing business in the European Union, which is interesting because, especially when it comes to the tech sector, you know, there are moves at EU level, you know, for more regulation. And we see now with, you know,
Elon Musk and X and how things played out in Belfast this week. But from the one side, Ireland is coming under pressure from the US saying don't regulate and then there will be other pressure coming from the European Union. And then in the mail on Sunday, his interview with John Lee is very much focused on the Occupied Territories Bill and saying that it is a source of...
annoyance to US businesses and it will damage Ireland's interests, even the sort of what many claim is the watered down version that is currently going through the Oireachtas.
So, Alan, this guy is doing his job. It's what he's here to do, to advocate for the US. And he's suggesting that as we are a big economic ally of the US, we should play ball.
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Chapter 2: How does the US-Ireland relationship impact business regulations?
It's not required of us under EU law to have an occupied territories bill.
It's required of us in terms of the services part that I'm emphasising from John Walsh that he brought up in the Daily Mail. So, and his point was, if you put services into place as well, that's going to be a problem for us. And my challenge for His Excellency is, well, if you are the ambassador of a country over to Ireland, you need to also understand the pulse of the public as well.
And the public understands And so far, I don't think anyone disagrees in this panel. That is, we are pro-Palestine. We are ensuring the protection of Palestine.
This is kind of an unfair question in a way, but I do think in a way it's an overt. Would you be OK if, say, you and or your husband lost your jobs because of a principled stance that Ireland took?
I would be, well, we lost our jobs over other stuff before. So I think if it's a... principle stance that is based on legality that is right and with the backing of the public, which this has at the moment in terms of the Occupy Pericles Bill. Yes, I would. I'm sorry. I would. And I'm not saying that flippantly. This is a conversation we've been having for eight years.
And it's a conversation that the world has been having for more than that for six decades at this stage when it comes to Palestine. And it's very obvious that we are one of the few countries nations along with Spain and others that are very committed to this and that our public has been outcrying against this.
And talking of jobs loss, when you look at the election, in general election, one of the key things the public managed to mention in terms of wanting their politicians to be stronger on was Palestine. So, yeah, I'm happy to lose my job if needs be.
Well, I agree with your analogy of Ireland doing the splits. We are so economically dependent on American multinationals here. You know, Alan rightly raised the income taxes and indeed value added taxes on top of the well spoken of corporation taxes. And I would estimate that over 50 percent of the state's total tax take is coming directly or indirectly from U.S. multinationals.
And I was struck by a poll. Half? More than half. So it's at least half. And I was struck by an opinion poll done by the Irish Times in the run-up to St. Patrick's Day, where they asked those polled, should Micheál Martin visit Donald Trump in the Oval Office? And it was something like 49% said yes, 42% said no.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the Occupied Territories Bill for Ireland?
And I think our political leadership is doing a poor job explaining to citizens just how economically dependent we are on the United States. Now, having said all that...
I think Irish people identify very much with Palestinian people because of the 1600 plantations where Irish people were driven off their land in a similar fashion to the way in which Palestinians are being driven off their land today. And we need, and there's clearly ethnic cleansing taking place. And having lived and worked for seven years in Germany, I'm aghast at Germany's reaction.
Having been the perpetrators of the Holocaust, they seem to think that the lesson of World War II is we must always stand by Israel. rather than we must always stand against future holocausts. So I do think we have to honour our own beliefs. I'm not quite sure, I'm not sufficiently familiar with the detail of the trading bill, but we've got a very difficult path to thread.
OK, so what you're saying is we do need to take an economic hit if there is one to stand by our principles.
Well, I think we can limit the Overseas Territories Bill to goods. I'm not quite sure why services need to be brought into it. I think the world is moving against Israel on this. Donald Trump cutting a deal with Iran that cuts out Israel is a signal of that. So I think we may have more room for manoeuvre on this question than is generally believed. OK, Mary, you wanted to come in there.
So just on that point of the government not sort of preparing people or explaining enough to people the, you know, the importance of US business here, the Taoiseach in particular, I think he really did change his position on the Occupied Territories Bill. The argument had been for so long when it was, you know, being delayed and, you know, they were accused of slow walking.
It was that there is attorney general advice here. We can't do this for legal purposes. But then there was a bit of a pivot about a month ago when Micheál Martin turned around and said, well, actually, the reason we're reticent about this is the reliance on US business.
And he said there are 250,000 jobs, he believed, that could be, you know, potentially, you know, at risk or at stake as a result of this. And he said, you know, that the government had to be cognizant of that, too. So he is bringing forward the bill was debated in the Dáil in the past week. But there is definitely a reluctance there on the Irish government's part in relation to this bill.
And I think it is trying to explain to people that this is potentially damaging economically, while at the same time putting pressure on other EU member states, because it'll come down to the member states at the end of the day, to suspend the EU-Israel, they call it the association agreement, which is a very lucrative trade deal that Israel has with the European Union.
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Chapter 4: How do loyalist communities in Northern Ireland react to current events?
Absolutely, and you see significant downturns. So retirement is one of those interesting things in life that everybody then sort of really looks forward to. But it seems that the actuality is not quite as good as the expectation. There's the notion of gradual retirement, which... The nicest way I've ever heard it put to me is that retirement really should be a process rather than an event.
I mean, that's item one. The other thing which I've heard said on occasions is that people should have gap years in their 60s. OK, so the idea was that you sort of step back from your big, chunky, high pressure job, maybe in your early 60s, go backpacking in Thailand or whatever like that.
Or you can, or you still can.
And then come back and maybe take a job which is a sort of step back from the real pressure.
Or giving something back, you know.
That's another very good way of putting it. But all those benefits of work which are in social connection, which we understand much more of, partly actually through TILDA. I mean, one of the things that has come out of the TILDA study is the very serious health impacts of loneliness and social isolation.
One way of keeping yourself young and active and engaged and all of those sort of things is social connection. Going and inflict yourself on your colleagues.
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Chapter 5: How does the panel discuss the balance between immigration and local community needs?
Well, there you go. I hear everybody's looking forward to you.
retiring but the staff say to me all the time when it comes to loneliness and this is why you have countries like china that even at retirement age they then have programs out in terms of keeping you active physically yeah so there are plenty of squares of plenty of public squares and also public they're all out doing tai chi and everything in the morning and tai chi dancing there was some um
Are the elders included and respected a bit more in Chinese society as well?
They are very respectful of elder. And for your elder, once they hit the retirement age, it's for them to choose then what to do. So there's programmes for further learning as well, for community programmes. And I think that's the gap we're missing when it comes to Western society is that we look at a retirement age as this, well, you are now...
off to do whatever you want, but half the time, you don't really know what you want to do. So because you've spent most of your life working, so you're building that to that point of, well, I spend my daily life working, what do I do now? Whereas in Asian cultures, it happens to be, well, you spend your life working, It can't really stop now.
So you switch it to some other activity, be it physical, be it mindful, something else. So I think that helps.
OK, that was a nice little digression. Now, Alan, the deal that may or may not be happening in the Gulf Islands. Okay, so I won't ask you to predict if it's happening or not because, like, who knows?
Well, Donald Trump said it.
Yeah, and the Iranians seem less sure, but then he said it's definitely happening. 39 times, apparently, we've been on the cusp of a deal. So say it does happen and it does seem more imminent than it ever was. Could we see an economic loosening fairly quickly? If the Strait of Hormuz did open tomorrow immediately, as he's claiming it would, would we see oil prices straight away go down?
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges facing the Irish healthcare system?
You know, he tweeted about this, I think something like eight times on that particular day after the horrific knife attack.
But then you throw in on top of that what Sam McBride is writing about, the loyalist paramilitaries having their structures in place in these communities so they then can jump on to what's happening online and the division that's happening online and then sort of use that for their own purposes, you know, either to sort of...
get the next generation active, but also to show their power and their control over communities. And he does tie into this the sort of sociological element as well, which he's saying that one of the big complaints of people living in these loyalist communities is that they have a disproportionate amount of migrants living in their communities.
But the reason for that, he says, is that rents are lowest in these areas precisely because the loyalist paramilitaries have made a situation that people don't want to live there. So it's a sort of real complex situation in the north, you know, compared to other areas where there have been similar riots stoked by the far right. But there is this added element now in the north.
Alan? Yeah, no, it's a fascinating article. And again, it digs much deeper, really, I think, into what was going on. So, I mean, Mary sort of talked about the point there already, that one of the things that these areas suffer from is the fact that there's still a loyalist paramilitary presence, which seems to be sort of, you know, curtailing normality to a certain extent.
But just to broaden it, I mean, one of the things we've known for quite a while is, is that working class loyalist communities, to a certain extent, were left behind after the Good Friday Agreement.
And it's a very well established fact that especially if you look at working class Protestant boys in Northern Ireland, their rates of sort of stool completion and general success lags substantially behind other groups. So something has happened in Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement.
Now, one of the theories as to why that has happened, I don't know if this is true or not, but just to sort of advance it. In Northern Ireland, people like the DUP, in a sense, could always rely on the votes of loyalist communities, regardless of what they actually did in those communities. There was nobody to the left of them.
OK, so there was nobody really with a sort of a strong programme of investment in these communities. So there is a sense that, you know, and I guess all political parties are like this. If your electorate is not sort of pushing you to do better, you may not actually do better. So there is this group who have been left behind. And the data, it's absolutely clear that they have been.
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Chapter 7: What positive stories were highlighted at the end of the episode?
I mean, the problem here is not immigration. The problem here is that this is a group of people who will be left behind for 25 years.
Just before I bring you back in, Mary Hazel, I'm conscious that you are the only non-white Irish person here, right?
Chapter 8: What role does social media play in shaping public opinion?
And that we've had this conversation now so far, and we have like, look, we were focusing on a particular aspect of it, but we have talked about the problems of that community. And we have not mentioned race, people being burned out of their houses and everything else.
But would you agree that what's been said about those communities, it's not an excuse for what happened, but is that an important part of the picture?
It's an essential part. I think Sam's piece was really good insofar to what Alan said there. Like the Good Friday Agreement, one of the, like, quoting Sam here, is that one of the enduring injustices is that this would never happen in a leafy suburb somewhere.
And it is... So you're not condemning, condemning, condemning, calling all these people racist and everything.
You do have to condemn. That's not your first... It's not your first reaction, though, for a reason. Okay, that's interesting. Because this is decades of unrest here. And this is the third year in a row that these violent programs have happened. But at the same time, the end... The end reason, and there's many, but one of the focuses needs to be community investment.
And there's been a sheer lack of it for decades in these areas. So how much of a part is racism playing in this? Racism comes into play because of who is being targeted and what is being used as a scapegoat, shall we say. And the fact that you have the Elon Musk, the Tommy Robinsons all jumping on, people who wouldn't have...
giving a toss about Belfast at all, suddenly were retreating to their millions of followers. Why? Because they could scapegoat it to race and they could then mobilize their individuals.
So these people are not inherently racist. There is an unhappy, frustrated energy in these communities and it is basically being funneled at the other community.
I think recapping it without symbolising it is that a cohort of community has been left behind for far too long. And there is this growing frustration that's been happening and riots have been happening for so long. But now there is the race element. So there is an element of, well, we need to scapegoat on someone. Who shall that be?
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