What is on the agenda in Cabinet today?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. Now the Cabinet is meeting this morning. Newstalk's political correspondent, Sean Defoe, is with me to run through what's expected. Good morning, Sean. Morning, Clare. Before we come to Cabinet, let's talk about the Healy Rays and that bombshell interview on Radio Kerry with Gerry O'Sullivan yesterday. More of a division there between the brothers than we possibly saw coming.
Oh, an extraordinary interview, 40-minute long interview and well worth every bit of the listen if people want to go back and catch it today. And the gist of it is essentially Michael Healy-Ray saying that his brother Danny cost him a ministry and that his criticism of Ní Thoán Martin and Simon Harris and saying that they both needed to go as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil leaders dragged him overboard, that he wasn't so much, you know, sacked by his own actions or anything else that happened, but rather really
What are the expectations for the Cabinet meeting today?
sacked by his brother and something that was completely at odds with what he said when it happened this obviously we'd had suspicions about this the day that he resigned that it was you know the two-for-one deal when it came to votes that they uh they were a package together and that michael and his son jackie who was working with him didn't really want to go but danny had made his position clear and at the time i remember asking michael healy ray about it When he came out of the Taoiseach's office that day and he said, no, no, this is no, you know, Team Healy Ray thing. This is the government letting people down. Obviously, that was putting a face on things because he totally about faced that yesterday.
Let's have a listen. I think it's worth just hearing one of these clips again. This is Michael Healy Ray speaking to Gerry O'Sullivan yesterday, asked about that two for one deal and whether it existed. He gave this response.
What was revealed in the Healy Rays' recent interview?
Of course, the agreement was that when there would be no confidence motions, when there'd be important votes, that there'd be two Healy Rays. And this was the first political test, the hard test. And what happened? There was an interview with you that upset the whole thing.
Danny started the fires, you said it in Radio Kerry, and that's the reason you had to resign.
But did you try and stay? Like, we were on a ship. Did I jump overboard? I didn't jump overboard. I was pulled overboard. You were pulled overboard by Danny. I was pulled overboard by a situation.
But I never said it wasn't. Then when you look ahead, and Gerry O'Sullivan asked Michael Healy-Ray if political cooperation will continue with his brother Danny, he said reliability is everything to him.
Nobody can ever go saying what the future is going to bring. What I would say is reliability to me is everything. And he's not reliable. And being able to trust people is very, very important. And you can't trust him now. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is the facts are what happened.
How did Michael Healy-Ray's comments impact his political stance?
But all we have to do now is start again. And try and regroup. The word I'd use is soul searching and just trying to get on. And again, our bosses are the electorate.
It's just fascinating, Sean, because that Healy Ray thing was nothing short of an absolute machine, a vote winning machine in Kerry. And where does it go from here?
That's the big question. And look, there's so many layers to this when you look at it. The word reliability, he kind of called that back to his father, to Jackie Healy-Ray, who he said was reliable with Bertie Hearn and went in and voted for cuts to pay for the likes of teachers and things that weren't unpopular but he did it and he got stuff for the people of Kerry out of it as a result and he was asked several times towards the end of that interview look is this the end between you and Danny is this it is there a fissure between the two of you and he just he wouldn't go there and he wouldn't say it and they've been so politically tied at the hip down to, you know, that very famous map that first appeared at the 2016 general election where they had colour-coded the entirety of Kerry and they said if you're in this part, vote number one for Michael and if you're in this part, vote number one for Danny and got 38% of the vote at that particular election in that constituency.
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