Path to Power

00:00 Thank you for listening to the Path to Power podcast. You can sign up to the Path to Power Plus to enjoy ad-free listening and to get early access and also to get our exclusive extra bonus edition once a week for those who subscribe to Path to Power podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by the Greenman Group, a European investment and operations group investing in and operating the essential sustainable assets for our future. 00:40 The Greenman Group focuses on three pillars, sustainable investing, real assets such as real estate and agriculture, as well as green energy infrastructure. What makes the group unique is its integrated model. It doesn't just finance these assets through its network of businesses, it builds, manages and optimises its pillars for the long term. This approach is designed to create durable value from the ground up. To learn more about investing in or being involved in the real assets shaping a sustainable future, you can visit the Greenman Group's website at thegreenman.group Hello and welcome to Path to Power. 01:30 We're joined today by former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and by Anya Kerr. Thank you both very much for being with us. There's lots of things I want to talk to you about. Pay for public sector workers, Health Minister Jennifer Carl McNeill and hospital consultants. Simon Harris and his savings and investment accounts, maybe a little bit on our security spend and also Donald Trump's visit to Ireland, which is coming up next week. But I want to start, though, with carbon tax. And the reason I want to start with carbon tax is... We've had a major UN report this week saying basically we're failing in our aspirations to contain global warming. 02:08 The 1.5% increase in average temperatures, forget about it, we're breaking through that. It's a question of stopping it going much further than that. And Ireland, of course, has its role to play in relation to that. Carbon tax has been one of the measures introduced as a way, I suppose, to nudge behaviour in relation to how people do things which emit carbon, but also to raise money which can be put into mitigating measures. 02:36 And yet we have the situation where the excise duty on fuel, the restoration to previous rates has been deferred to November. 02:46 start in November. And a lot of us think that that won't actually happen, that the government will kick that can down the road again. But what's the point in doing that if carbon taxes go up in the budget in October? So I want to talk about whether they should be increased in October, but also have carbon taxes actually outused or outlived their usefulness to an extent. Let's start with you, Anya, on this. I mean, is there a logic in putting up carbon tax on petrol and diesel, home heating oil in October, if you're actually suppressing the excise duties on the same product? 03:18 Yeah, there's a massive contradiction, obviously, at play now and a tension point between the short term need to respond to what is happening in this poly crisis moment and in the markets and doing what they've done in terms of deferring any increases again in the excise duties. And that can be argued in the cost of living crisis. That is right and appropriate. We like to see it more targeted, of course. But we get the responsibility of a government in the short term to be responsible in that manner. But what's lacking in parallel to that, though, is a long term plan that is futuristic, that is looking at those climate change targets, looking at a UN report like that, that did not scenario plan for scenarios where we might exceed 1.5 degrees and beyond, and instead has the reality moment coming out the back of what heatwaves, We've seen the tragic events in Nepal. 04:08 We all know what conditions were like this summer where we went from heatwave to monsoon weather. We are living in this climate change crisis moment and having to think about those future generations. But we are without a long term plan. And we sit here today in September without a climate action plan for 2026. 04:27 Now, in my business and organisations and charities, if you want a plan for 2026, you were publishing that 12 months ago, not sitting here in the month of September, still without an unpublished plan for a year that is about to enter its final quarter. So we're left in this scenario of being unclear about that climate action plan and therefore where does a carbon tax now sit? And you can argue a carbon tax was well intentioned. You want to ring fence for funding, retrofitting, EVs, charging at home, all of that good stuff. 05:01 But to your point there, it was part of this nudge behaviour. And when you are dealing with astronomical energy prices, the question probably does bear asking of, well, does that original intent around behaviour still stand up? And do we need to instead be looking at a longer term plan here, which is, yes, trying to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, looking again at is the carbon tax the right nudge theory, the right, and do we need more targeted tax interventions? 05:29 Leo? 05:30 I suppose I have two thoughts on all of this. First of all, as the driver of a 10-year-old diesel, I'm not upset that diesel and petrol prices aren't going to go up by another 30 cents. I do not like when the Yeti costs more than 100 euros to fill. 05:45 But as a citizen and as somebody who cares about diesel, My community, my country, the planet. 05:54 I think there is a lot of short-termism going on. Like if you think about it more broadly, 2027 will be our fourth year of temporary measures to deal with the cost of living crisis. One-offs, temporary measures now entering their fourth year. So twice as long as the measures that were introduced around COVID, which were genuinely temporary. 06:14 So anyway, there's a few weeks ago in the Sunday Times. I think when it comes to the cost of living, The time for temporary measures is past. The cost of living is not going back down again. You know, some prices might go down a bit, but overall, the cost of living is going to keep going up. It has been for a century. That's the nature of a fiat currency. Things cost more than they did 10 years ago. 06:35 Then they cost more than they did 10 years before. I think we're beyond the cycle of temporary measures now, and what you need is an incomes policy to bring people's incomes up. So rather than trying to firefight and push back against the waves, the way to deal with the cost of living crisis, in my view, is through higher wages, not by temporary tax measures. On the environmental point, the carbon tax has kind of worked. It's not a normal tax. It's designed to change behavior. The money raised from it is ring-fenced for... climate action, like EV charging points, like retrofitting houses and so on. 07:10 You know, this year, the biggest selling cars were battery electric vehicles. 07:14 I think over 60% sold this year so far are hybrid plug-ins or battery only. 07:20 Although a lot of environmentalists will tell you that a hybrid is actually not a good thing. 07:24 Yeah, and the right effect is better than petrol diesel. But now the best selling type of car is a battery only. 07:32 You know, that's something people probably thought wouldn't have happened only a few years ago. And we're retrofitting, people are investing to retrofit and perform home energy upgrades at a rate of 30,000 a year. 07:42 Come back to your own car. Why have you not received the nudge to move electric? Why are you still? I know there's an argument. 07:48 I should confess that it's not my car. We're one car old. Okay, but I mean, you're the car. 07:53 There is the argument that you should run an old car into the ground, that environmentally, even if it's running petrol or diesel, because of the environmental damage caused by getting rid of it and the construction of even a new electric car, run your old car into the ground. I don't know how valid that actually is. But, you know, given that diesel and petrol are expensive, in your case diesel, Why not go electric? 08:18 Well, this is kind of my dilemma. Now, in my defense, I did the full home energy upgrade this year. We produced more electricity than we used in May, June, July and August, which was great. I looked at the bill yesterday. Did you get credit for it? 08:30 Yeah, Electric Ireland owes me 100 euros. 08:32 It's really, really great now. I know that's going to change over the winter, but, you know, really glad we made that investment. Look, we could afford to. 08:38 The first time I've got a government grant since I was a student, so it was nice to get one of those things. 08:43 And on the car, like, what's actually thinking about changing it next year? Because it's hit in 10 years and you've got the annual NCT and all that. Now starting to wonder if I will, because the message from the carbon tax before was that, you know, the cost of petrol, the cost of diesel, the cost of home heating oil will rise over time. 09:05 And you should invest in new technologies over the next couple of years and will help you through different government measures. It now seems to me, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but it was touched on by one of the writers in the papers during the week, that now the government policy is to keep petrol and diesel under two euros a litre. So that's a totally different message to prices are going to drift up over time. So if the policy is now to keep prices under two euros a litre, maybe I will defer my plans to change... 09:38 change my vehicle and others might too. And that's the whole point really of the carbon tax. So that will be the difficulty, I think, in not resuming the increases. Now, maybe they might do it at a slower rate, a different trajectory. Maybe they might make an exception for home eating oil. But I think if you get into rolling deferrals of the carbon tax, then the message changes. And the message is now that it's government policy to keep the price of petrol and diesel down. and home eating all down, in which case, why would I make the change? And it's not just household as businesses too, because half the carbon tax and most of the emissions come from business. 10:10 That does seem very problematic, though, whether intentional or accidental, the two euro threshold, because that's hope and optimism as a strategy, hoping that the Suez Canal, that there'll be... Street of Hormuz. Street of Hormuz, rather, that you will have a negotiated agreement, that we will see prices come down globally. But like the question does bear asking of what is government responsibility then when it comes to all of these excise duties, when it comes to carbon tax. And right now there is a bias to having that intervention, but I would suspect a bias to optimism here as well. 10:47 And you can see the tension starting to play out very, very subtly in language. And I'm watching as someone who is a cyclist and I have the electric car. And I do think this does need to be prioritised by government. But when you watch the Tawnish this week talk about... 11:02 that the trajectory for the carbon tax was set before the war in Ukraine, before President Trump and Iran was involved in this conflict. And he's talking about how these global shocks couldn't have been obviously forecast. And that merits reflection. But you look at the Taoiseach yesterday, Michael Martin coming out and saying the carbon tax would be considered. But he was a little bit more circumstantial. And he talked about the tax being baked into the National Development Plan for Climate Change. And if they were to decide to defer or cancel or whatever the annual carbon tax, you're leaving what? Another 160 million hole in the public finances. 11:34 So are you going to say, right, well, we'll find a way to fund our EVs, our retrofitting, all of these other initiatives in another way, 160 million? Or are we saying it's less of a priority? 11:45 You see, there's another thing in relation to the carbon tax. 11:48 There's not a tax that's popular. Taxes are just not popular. But there are taxes that I think people will sort of accept, albeit reluctantly, but because they understand there might be a need for them. 12:01 I suspect carbon tax now is becoming deeply unpopular with people in the way that for many people the USC is deeply unpopular as well because they feel what benefit are they actually getting for it? And also they feel that whatever we do in Ireland, is minuscule in the global scheme of things that whatever ways we try and modify our behavior, for example, when America goes bombing Iran or when Israel goes bombing Gaza, the emissions from all of that, for example, just completely outweighs anything that we're sacrificing ourselves for. 12:39 So they look at it and go, what's the point of these carbon taxes? 12:42 Yeah, well, look, the carbon tax was never popular. It was brought in in 2010 under the then Fine Gael Green government, or Fianna Fáil Green government, just that long ago. 12:53 And we paused it actually for a while when we were in government and used excise instead. And then kind of started increasing it again. The key change we made was to hypothecate it, which officials hate and economists hate. 13:04 What do you mean by that? 13:05 Saying that the money goes into a special fund for climate action. Not all of it does, but most of it does. And it goes into things like the fuel allowance to help people with fuel poverty. And I think that helps to improve acceptance. If people know it doesn't just go into the general part, that it goes into... helping people in fuel poverty, green farming, electric vehicle charging points, retrofit. In the same way as the local property tax, I think gained more acceptance when people knew that it was going to stay in their county and most of it does. 13:34 but in terms of our role to play in the world I understand that argument we're only small players we only count for less than 1% of the global emissions per head of population that's the way I would look at it in two ways emissions per capita per head in Ireland are among the highest in the world so we actually are doing more harm than our share and we've been doing it for a long time unlike people in Nepal for example who are bearing the brunt of it in the last few weeks and then also if a rich country like Ireland doesn't Take climate action. 14:09 How can we turn around to a developing country like India or Nigeria or wherever and say to them that they should? So that's the power of us taking action. 14:19 Yeah, and I think we would end up with a real perception problem unless you have something else to mitigate and you have some alternative to the carbon tax. And to your point there around, yes, we are a small island in the grand scheme of things, but it does come back to the idea of individual responsibility, collective action. And I do think we need a spectrum of ideas and supports and initiatives, but probably the carbon tax particularly feels punitive when what we have to be selling is a vision of the future that is yet not unrealised. We could still hit 1.5% exceed that but bring it back. 14:53 There are scenarios where this could still be rescued. So you have to sell people positivity and hope as opposed to what it feels like are penalties. 15:00 But then why put up the price of public transport? Because this is the story this week. The NTA, National Transport Authority, has agreed to what the headlines were saying, an average 15% increase in in fares. Actually, if you look at some of the fares are going up way more than 15%. For example, I'm in the fortunate position that I'm not too far from work or if I'm coming over here to the studio, use my LeapCard, I can tap on for €1.50 for a short journey. 15:30 it's now going up to €2, which is a 33% increase rather than 15%. Now, you could argue, quite correctly, that's still good value. It's a damn sight cheaper than using a taxi if I was going to use a taxi. But where I can afford that, there's an awful lot of people who I think do find the price of commuting to work to be quite expensive. And they don't really have the alternatives. It's not a question of nudging them out of cars. They mightn't have cars in the first place anyway. 15:59 I know the argument is that prices have gone up. Inflation since the last increase in 2018 is 22%. So this is only partially a catch up. But what sort of signal does it send in relation to persuading people to use public transport as an alternative? 16:16 And you are right. You can be sympathetic to the cost of doing business for a Dublin bus, a bus area, whatever it might be. And yet it's the signal. It's the perception that you now go out with a narrative like that. And listening to Vox Pops yesterday, the trend line talking to people who use the bus services every day was, I would pay it if the quality of your service is also increasing and accelerating with it. that you've got predictability of bus routes, timelines. 16:45 Instead of ghost buses, ones that disappear off the signs. 16:48 Although Dublin Bus constantly say there is no such thing. Yes, there is. 16:52 I have personal experience of it. 16:54 And I think therein is your problem. I think people could go, okay, it's another 30 cent and would question the affordability, but pay it if they felt, yeah, the quality of the service is keeping pace. And I think therein is the problem. 17:05 I was actually talking to a few people yesterday, some of them TDs representing commuter constituencies and actually made the same point that people wouldn't be as annoyed or would be more willing to accept the increase if the services were more frequent, weren't so overcrowded, didn't have the ghost buses. 17:24 So let's see how that pans out. I don't have huge confidence that in January and February and March people are going to see dramatically improved services because of this, but maybe I'm wrong. 17:32 Well, indeed, one of the things I was told yesterday was Shane Moynihan out of Fianna Fáil was making the argument that this will provide the money for investment in new facilities and new buses. to which you say, well, what about all the buses that the electric buses purchased by Dublin Bus? We still haven't gone into service because they haven't been able to take delivery of them because they haven't put the charging points into the tables. 17:55 I still don't understand what's going on there. I was at the meeting with Eamon Ryan, Micheál Martin and others when Eamon was underspending on his budget because various projects hadn't come through planning and we took a decision to authorise him to buy the buses early. 18:11 on the basis that they might be waiting around for six months until the charging infrastructure arrives. Like, this must be two or three years later now. Somebody should do a proper investigation of this PAC or somebody else. It doesn't make sense to me that you can't... It just doesn't add up, quite frankly. There's something going on there, and I don't think we've been told the full story. But just to answer your original question... 18:32 What's happening here is a change of policy, and it's not an insignificant one. There used to be annual increases in bus and train fares. That used to be the norm. A decision was taken, I think, in 2018-19. It was the Fine Gael minority government, before the Greens got into office, that we would stop annual increases in public transport. We'd increase the level of state subvention, and that was about encouraging people. 18:56 Why did you do that? 18:57 To encourage people to use public transport, as simple as that. 19:01 It was never of the view that it was realistic to make it free or make it as cheap as it is in some parts of Europe. But we did take the view that we would end the annual increases in Ferris, increase the subvention and make public transport cheaper. Then when the Greens came into government, that was kind of turbocharged and there were actual reductions, particularly for young people, for children, which I supported at the time. What we're now going back to, it would appear, is not just a 15% increase in January. but a return of annual increases in fares. And that is a significant change in policy. 19:34 I'm not sure it's the right one. 19:36 And it comes at a time when it seems that government policy is to find 100 million a month to keep petrol and diesel below two cents a litre, but not find any money to keep the two euro fare. And, you know, both the economics of... four years of temporary measures and the environmental policy of finding money to keep the cost of fossil fuels down but not the cost of public transport down seems kind of jarring. Look, maybe that'll change in the next few months, but... 20:08 Where is the strategy? The public sector unions are not happy with this as well, Áine, because as they rightly say, many of their members depend on public transport to get to and from their places of work. We also now have strike action this week been authorized by members of CIP2 and FORSA. So the vast majority of public sector workers are prepared to go on strike. The reason being the pay deal that they had concluded at the end of June And as yet, there are no new talks with their employer in relation to pay increases. 20:41 And they're also making the point, and we actually had Owen Reedy, who is from the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, here on Path to Power a couple of months ago, making the point very forcibly that They expect to have talks and they expect to get pay increases because they go through the proper channels in doing things, unlike the people who went out and protested in April and managed to get the excise duty reductions. I find this a very strange one, that the government hasn't actually gone out of its way to get the unions in and have the talks, have the negotiations. 21:16 And this always feels cyclical. We come to a point in the calendar of they're all brought in and we have weeks of negotiations and posturing. 21:26 But this does feel different this time to your point there of an agreement ending in June, but we're here in September. And rather than it feeling like there were substantive talks and there were some informal talks, we know early in the summer. Instead, we have people being balloted on strike action and we have what SIP2 enforces so far, counting for 160,000 public sector workers, balloting on potential strike action. And it does seem strange that we are here on the cusp of potentially long negotiations, potentially a long dispute, and there doesn't seem to have been the willpower, the political appetite to get people into a room. 22:04 Now, this word preconditions has been bandied around a lot. The unions would say we didn't have preconditions, but we did want to talk about inflationary measures. The fact that back in May, they were looking at 3.6% inflation, which was wiping out the 2% that their workers would have gotten and that they wanted to have a real conversation up front. Whereas, as we know, traditionally, all of these talks you come to pay last. 22:27 Government would have been the ones, I think, particularly the finance minister, Jack Chambers, saying we want to talk, we're just not going to do it with a precondition hanging over us. So we're kind of stuck on this word precondition and who said what and who wanted what criteria and what conditions to go into talks. But this does not feel like a sustainable place when we're weeks out from a budget. How do you as a government... Now go and forecast your payroll bill without talks commencing and having some figures and numbers to input into your very complicated, complex spreadsheet for 2027 and beyond. 23:06 And obviously unions feel emboldened because of the few protests earlier this year of maybe thinking, Is there a different way to negotiate with government that what got us here is not going to be the thing that got us there? 23:19 Well, indeed, there was one of the most important public sector union leaders told me during the week that he's had nothing more than a sort of a casual 15-minute conversation with Jack Chambers since he became Minister for Public Expenditure. And he feels, do I need to be a protester to get more access to the minister? So what do you think is going on here, Leo? Leo? 23:40 I'm not sure. Like, I can't remember the last time there was such a big gap between a public, you know, usually the next deal is agreed before the last one expires. So, and the consequence of that is that public servants or teachers or doctors are our firemen, our civil servants, our people in revenue and social welfare are actually worse off this year in real terms because their pay increase is less than the rate of inflation and then also the increase in PRSI means they're actually worse off in real terms. 24:14 And that's a long time again since that's happened. 24:16 The irony of that is that last year when Pascal Donoghue, in his last budget as Minister for Finance, decided not to adjust the tax credits and tax bans, leaving people worse out. I remember challenging him on this, on the last word, and he said, more or less, these words, well, people are going to have to go and negotiate with their employer, get a pay rise to ensure that they can maintain their standard of living. 24:42 In the private sector, a lot of people did. 24:44 Yeah, so here we have at least 400,000 public sector employees who are going, they want to negotiate with their employer who won't actually talk to them. 24:55 There will be a deal in the end because there always is. 24:58 And I think the parameters of that are roughly there. It's quite significant pay increases to compensate public sector workers for inflation. 25:08 The government will have to clearly signal that there will be tax packages in this budget and future budgets. 25:16 I'm fascinated now to see trade unions supporting indexation of tax plans and credits. When I was in office, they were against it and they were critical of it. 25:25 Now they see the effect of that not happening in one year and their members have turned on them and they've changed their position. 25:32 I think Brendan Howland once quipped that Labour's greatest achievement in power was to turn Leo Varadkar into a Social Democrat. So perhaps my greatest achievement was to turn the trade union movement into income tax cutters. It's great to see them calling for that because I used to be against it. But the other thing will have to be some sort of agreement, I think, around numbers. Jack Chambers wrote an interesting piece in the Irish Times a few weeks ago. And he pointed out that just since 2020, an extra 70,000 full-time public servants have been hired. 26:01 Like, that's not sustainable, so there'll have to be an agreement around that. 26:03 But yet we also still have gaps in public service employment. Is that all down to numbers? We need more nurses. So there's certain types of position, and presumably you also have to make those positions well enough paid to encourage people to take them. 26:19 I'm not saying there shouldn't be more. I'm saying that a rate of increase, of an extra 12,000 public servants a year or something in that ballpark, that's probably not affordable. 26:28 And where have they all gone? Because they can't all be, obviously, nurses and Gardaí and teachers and stuff because we don't seem to be employing enough to fill all the vacancies we have in those. So where are all these other people going to work? 26:41 Yeah, those figures are available and there has actually been a big increase in frontline staff and health service. Not the case with the Gardaí, for example. And teachers arguably do need more of them, like the number of children in schools going down. 26:52 Now, maybe we do in certain areas, but can we not move people from one area to other, for example? 27:00 So are the bulk of those 70,000 people going into administration roles? 27:04 No, but there are a lot that have gone into management and administration. And you do need those people, by the way. How many do you need? 27:11 Yeah, and at a time where AI is rapidly advancing, it's admin and some of these strategy ops jobs that are the ones that are going to be replaced and displaced with so-called radical efficiencies, the new era of it. I do hope as they get into talks and obviously get deserved pay increases, though, that they can wrangle with some of the thorny issues. of housing, AI efficiencies and what all of that is going to look like for a public service and remote working, which obviously has been a big probably incentive for some public sector workers and civic workers. 27:46 I will say, though, for the public, I wonder how long a public will be able to navigate and have patience for any ambiguity. And if there are headlines for weeks on end about protests and strike action, because I feel like so many people are at their wits end and can't take any more strife and turmoil. 28:09 Yeah, because if we believe the government doesn't want to have protests on the roads, particularly in November, the key month of hosting the EU presidency, does it really want to have to be dealing with strikes in hospitals and schools? 28:22 The question, though, you know, when you're in government, you can't always stop a strike. 28:27 Sometimes the unions need to have a strike. And I'm not sure if that's the space they're in at the moment. Maybe they are. 28:33 But because of the fuel protests, because of the rise in the cost of living, one thing unions have to do, they have to get to a deal and they have to settle a dispute. They also have to get their union members to vote for it. And to do that, they have to demonstrate, to use the term they love to use, that we didn't leave a euro on the table. And that's sometimes why you have this Dance of the Seven Veils, this game, we go to WRC, we go to the Labour Court. In the old days, Ingrid Mighty waiting outside Lansdowne Road at 4 a.m. when they probably made the deal at midnight. 29:05 We just let that wait outside before we tell them. They get into dominoes for the last order, you know. But, you know, it's all part of the game of industrial relations. I shouldn't say game, but the strategy of industrial relations where in order to get your agreement ratified, you have to demonstrate to your members that there is nothing. But has it got to the point now? And maybe it has. 29:26 that the union leaders feel they need a strike. It might just be a one-day strike. It might just be work to rule. But maybe they feel that in order to get a deal and get a deal through, they actually need to do a strike. And sometimes they need a strike. 29:40 And allow venting and the anger to be. 29:42 Okay, we need to take a break. I want to come back and talk about Jennifer Carol McNeill and the hospital consultants, Simon Harris and his savings and investment accounts, Donald Trump's visit next week, and also a little bit about Nigel Farage and a bit of bother in the UK. We'll get to all of that when we come back after this break. Today's episode is brought to you by The Greenman Group. It's answering a critical question, how to invest in a sustainable future in real, tangible terms. Its answer lies in three areas – the energy transition, the places we live and shop, and the future of our food supply. 30:17 The Greenman Group's strategy is to own and operate the physical infrastructure in these sectors, from solar energy generation and EV charging, to agricultural projects and grocery-anchored real estate. By building, managing and optimizing these areas via its investment and operational businesses, the group aims to build resilience and deliver long-term value. Explore its approach at thegreenman.group. So welcome back. We have Onya Kerr and Leo Varadkar still with us. So Jennifer Carl McNeill as Minister for Health. 30:52 wants hospital consultants to live up to the terms of their contracts and be available to work on Saturdays and also longer hours Monday to Friday, all of which makes an enormous amount of sense. However, the hospital consultants are responding that, well, that's great, but if we work on Saturdays instead of Mondays, we actually get to see fewer patients on the Saturday than we do on the Monday Monday. 31:19 because there aren't enough, for example, people there to take the x-rays, to do the bloods on a Saturday. 31:26 So also what the hospital consultants are saying is that there's not enough of these other people, there's not enough of them, that for every 1,000 in the population in Ireland, there's two hospital consultants, the EU average is three. 31:42 So what happens? How does this get sorted out? Because I think people, Leo, want, and you're a former Minister for Health, they want to be able to see doctors at the weekends to get things dealt with. They believe that when doctors are on public-only contracts that are paying anything between about $250,000 to $340,000 a year, that they want them to be available. But do we actually then have to spend an enormous amount of additional money in hiring more doctors, more radiologists, more people who do the bloods and all the rest of it. 32:15 Or would that actually be paid for because at the moment we're spending such an enormous amount on overtime? I think already this year it looks like the health budget has gone £700 million over. That may be part of the way of reducing that is to make full-time appointments. You tell us, you know this better than us. 32:31 Yeah, well look, both sides have a point here. The consultants and the doctors are right to say that there's little point in us being in in big numbers on Saturdays and Sundays, if the radiologists aren't there to do x-rays, if the physios aren't there to do physio, if the lab staff are running a skeleton service and can't do the tests. And more than that, it's not just about the hospital, it's about the community too. It can be hard to discharge patients to nursing homes and to home on the weekend because the community services aren't there or the nursing home nursing homes won't take admissions on weekends because there are fewer staff and a lot of visitors and so on. 33:07 So you have to have the whole picture if you're going to deliver that kind of increased productivity. The point the Department of Health would make, and I imagine the Minister would make too, is that we have seen a massive expansion in our healthcare workforce over the past number of years. And while the number of staff has gone up by X percent, the amount of work done has not gone up by X percent. We haven't seen a big increase in the number of outpatient appointments. We haven't seen a big increase in the number of operations done and I think that's what's rightly worrying the department and the people in the Department of Public Expenditure as well because in theory more nurses, more doctors, more lab people, more staff should mean more work gets done but that's actually not happening. 33:47 The rate of activity has gone up a bit, but the number of staff has gone up a lot. 33:52 What would you put that down to? Because you would have a natural assumption of productivity, therefore should increase. 33:58 But productivity has actually gone down. Activity has gone up a bit, but productivity has actually gone down. So why is that? Now, one answer, and it's part of the equation, is older patients, more complex patients. 34:15 The work has changed, but I don't think that fully adds up. 34:18 And Ornia, of course, as I mentioned, Dr. Gabrielle Colloran, the head of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, did a path to par recently, was available to subscribers still there to listen to, and she paints the picture of what has been going on. But when I spoke to her on the last word Thursday evening, she made the point that she hasn't had a face-to-face conversation with the minister since March 2025. 34:44 Which really struck me as surprising. I know a lot of the time that the representatives of the likes of the Irish hospital consultants or the Irish medical organisation, the nurses, whatever, they'll do most of their work dealing with the officials in the Department of Health and the HSE. But you would have thought, given that this is so sensitive and given that the Minister has made such a big issue about discharges over bank holiday weekends and the working hours of consultants, that at least they would have sat down face to face for a conversation. 35:15 Because I think what Leo is talking about there requires, it's ambitious, but it requires collaboration. And this holistic approach and making sure people are not in their silos because you can be in your silos with the best intentions and good intentions in the world, but you can be duplicating work. You can be doing the wrong type of work that isn't correct in terms of prioritization. So you would think ministers generally in terms of some of your priority stakeholders. that there should be that face time where you're checking back in on ranking on your priorities. Are these the right milestones? 35:45 What the data trends look like? It's just a good best practice. And I see that I chair a few charities, different organizations I'm involved in, that when you can have that face time, sometimes the unsaid gets said. It's just human nature, human connection. You can say the hard things. about hard things, but problem solved together, face to face, where you're saying, listen, we want the same outcome here. We might need to be flexible about how we get there. What's the compromise? And you can't be seeing that in person than through sometimes endless emails. 36:14 You get information and you get understanding. 36:17 Exactly. And shared vision, shared purpose and leave again, recommitting to that is the 2030, 2035 goal that we're all driving towards. And here is the hand on the lever I have as a minister and I have as a key stakeholder. So, Yeah, in the ideal world, you would like to think there's a roster that means you're constantly checking back in. And the other beauty of doing it, of course, face to face is you're trying to minimize curveballs and surprises. Like no senior leader or minister, presumably, wants to be dealing with a knee jerk controversy that they didn't see coming, that you have something read into it. 36:52 You can look around corners. You can scenario plan. 36:55 I'm surprised the minister hasn't met the consultants formally or informally for so long. 37:00 Yeah, well, we haven't heard Jennifer Carmack-Neill's side of that story. I'm looking for her. You meet people in different contexts. She may have spoken at their conference. She might have met them in different forums. 37:15 But it would be standard enough for a minister to meet the key stakeholders at least once a year, the main unions, the main companies, whatever. 37:23 But look, let's let her answer that question. 37:28 If I could do it all over again, and I probably wouldn't get away with it, I think one thing that would work on our health service would be a bonus system for staff, and not just doctors, all staff, where you get part of your pay or top-ups to your pay based on the amount of activity done. 37:47 And, you know, I worked almost entirely in the public sector, but I worked in general practice as well and I've been in and out of private hospitals. Like general practice in Ireland is extraordinarily efficient because largely doctors are paid per patient they see and by activity. The community pharmacy is very efficient too, fee per item. And you see private hospitals... You just don't see lists being cancelled as much. You don't see theatres shutting down at 3.30 or 4 o'clock on a Friday. 38:15 If the list is supposed to start at 8 o'clock, it does start at 8 o'clock. And there's no real incentive in the public system to get seven patients through rather than six that morning. It doesn't make any difference. You get paid the exact same. And they do this in other countries. It's done in Australia, to a lesser extent, the NHS in the UK, where people are actually incentivized for increased activity. 38:36 Now, there can be perverse aspects of that too, unnecessary operations being done, people being rushed through clinics, but maybe better. 38:45 The incentive system that seems to work in Ireland is that you have... 38:49 doctors doing public work, but they seem to be perhaps more productive doing private work at the weekend. And you also have the situation where it seems that hospitals are making facilities available in their hospitals to the doctors to do private work on the basis that it's additional income from the hospitals as well to help pay their bills. 39:10 Yeah, that's the insourcing, yeah. I'd honestly have to look at that again, because I thought a lot of that had changed, largely because of the public only contract. 39:20 It's still happening a bit. 39:22 But I suppose in some ways that does speak to my point. If this hospital can incentivise their own staff on a fee-per-item basis... 39:35 Why couldn't you have a system where that operates as a norm all week round and all year round that there is a bonus for activity? 39:44 Okay, let's move on. One of the things in the budget, I mean, we're obviously going to be looking at carbon taxes, income taxes, all the rest of it. But Simon Harris, as Minister for Finance, has been making an awful lot of his savings and investment accounts. 39:58 We still don't know an awful lot of the actual granular detail of how these would actually work. 40:05 I don't think they're going to be anything like Charlie McReavy's special savings accounts of a quarter century ago where there was free money coming from the state. 40:13 But what do you think is he up to? Is there going to be this great interest in it? And are people going to turn around and say, will you let people look after their own money for themselves? You deal with the cost of living measures and the government finances rather than getting too worked up about how people are using their savings. 40:33 Look, I think there's definitely merit in it when you look at those figures. Is it something like 175 billion sitting in Irish banks at the end of May? And when you look at the very low interests, rates, high inflation, that money is not working for folks. So it does feel like there's working capital there that could be applied in lots of better ways. I am conscious, though, all the headlines and speculation for months and weeks, there are a lot of people who just do not have savings. month to month are living paycheck to paycheck. 41:04 And so when we talk about this, I'm very conscious of people listening right now who are like, I don't have the privilege of savings. 41:10 They have an overdraft. 41:11 Yeah, exactly. And we're coming out of just back to school and all the costs that go with that. But clearly there are people in this country who have become savers. We were known for being spendrifts maybe during the Celtic Tiger years. Now we are hoarders. We are savers. And particularly, I suspect, a lot of our young people because they're saving for a deposit and for a mortgage of the future. So it definitely has merits. And I'm glad to see that the government has looked abroad to Canada, UK. 41:42 I think we've looked at some of the Nordic countries as well, Sweden, to see how to do this. So there's merit in it. There's obviously still a lot of ambiguity around what's the minimum threshold? Will there be a minimum? Well, it seems like there'll be a max. And I think that's appropriate so that this isn't wealthy individuals only maximising it. What will be the tax threshold? So lots to be figured out. I think there's merit also for women because you look at women's society, there is a long legacy issue in a country like this where only 33% of Irish investors are women. 42:18 And we know we have a gender pay gap. We know we have a pensions gap. So for a lot of women, they are retiring with roughly 120 grand less than their male counterparts, which often means women are having to work longer than their male counterparts. So even if a fund like this started to help women think about that long term trajectory that helps them keep pace with the pension gaps and pay gaps, I think there's merit in it. I think it needs to be targeted at the right people. And therefore, that does mean a real financial literacy campaign needs to kick in around this so people can protect understanding. 42:54 What do they need to keep in reserve that they constantly have an emergency fund for their day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month living and that they're not going to find themselves exposed? Because to do a fund like this, well, you kind of have to accept this is money that you are putting away for five, eight, ten years and beyond. And that is there as a savings mechanism in the background. So there needs to be a lot of, I think, literacy work done there. But then trying to educate people on where are the risks? What is their appetite risk when it comes to some of these funds? 43:25 And what is the appropriate amount for them? 43:27 You see, Leo, my thing with this is that clearly there's an awful lot of people who are saving and who are looking after their money. 43:34 And are we trying to encourage them to take that money and invest it? But invest it in what? Because all of the various investment managers to whom people will entrust their money will invest it all over the world. They'll invest it in equities in America. It could be gilts in other parts of the world and whatever. And you look at how much of it is actually going to be invested productively in Ireland. 44:00 Mm-hmm. 44:01 So, I mean, I've posited previously an idea. 44:04 You can put a stipulation in around that, I think. You can give people an option where a chunk is invested in Ireland, perhaps in startups and scale-ups, or you could, I think you could make it a provision that a certain amount has to be. 44:17 You see, I would favor the idea, a bit like what the French do, is having a special housing fund that you could actually persuade people to invest in a special mechanism whereby money is there in a company that builds and owns as landlords, houses and apartments in Ireland. You could, say, offer people an annual dividend of maybe just, say, for the sake of argument, 5% to be something higher than is available on bank interest. that it would be higher than the rate of inflation, and you could have it tax-free perhaps as an incentive. 44:55 That at least means that people would know they were investing in something, that they were doing a national service of some kind. 45:01 Would that not drive up the cost of housing, though? Well, you could say... Because if developers can already borrow, and certainly the government can, already borrow at a lower rate, why would you want to... 45:11 Well, the Biden government can probably borrow at the moment. I think the government borrowed, I think, a 3.5% this week. 45:16 Yeah, so if you were to give five, then you'd actually drive up the cost of housing, which would not be so desirable. 45:21 Some of the measures that we have at present are driving up the cost of housing anyway. We also see the SRI are saying that there's an overvaluation of property at the moment of 17% in Ireland. 45:31 But the overvaluation is down to the fact that we don't have enough supply to meet the demand. We have to find ways of building more houses. 45:40 I'm all for encouraging people to invest in housing and housing construction, but none of it's going to bring up the cost of housing. If the rate of return is too generous, that's what you'll do. 45:49 But if people are going to move their money out of safe savings, they have to be able to get a return that's better than that. So rather than them investing it in shares in Apple or Amazon or whatever, which are looking very, very highly priced at the moment, and you could see investments in international equities end up losing you a lot of money. Why not make sure that this special fund, if it is, at least goes into money that's productively invested in Ireland? Or could even be an infrastructure fund or something like that. 46:17 are good or you could say that a proportion of it has to be in in irish companies or irish-owned companies um so i think there's lots of options here you know i imagine when this is available to people there will be 20 30 40 50 different products they can choose from and perhaps some of those would fit into the criteria or the ideas that you've mentioned um i think this could be a very significant and very positive announcement in the budget um Granted, there are a lot of people who are struggling. There are also a lot of people who are saving. There's 140 billion or something in household savings on deposit in Ireland. 46:49 The 175 brings in a certain amount of charity money and corporate money as well. 46:55 And, you know, those people, and I am one of them, were actually losing money. Because not only is the rate of interest lower than the rate of inflation, you then pay dirt on the money you've actually lost. So it makes sense to have some precautionary savings in case something goes wrong and you need to fix the roof or buy a new washing machine. But beyond that, it makes sense to invest. And that's what people in America do, for example. One of the big cultural differences between Ireland and Europe on the one hand and America on the other is when you're sitting around the table over a beer and you're talking to Americans, they almost all have investments. 47:29 They have their 401ks. They know about the companies that they've invested in. They're less afraid of new technologies than we are because they're probably invested in them. It's different culturally. And I think if we could make that shift through this idea, it could really make a big difference for our country in the longer term. And Sweden is an example of where that's been done, where I think about 40% of people have a savings and investment account. The key thing is it has to be attractive enough and that's down to the tax treatment of it. 48:00 Hopefully that'll be good. 48:01 A couple of other things I want to talk about. Just to say as well, next week in our subscription edition, Pat for America with Mary McKeown on Wednesday, we will be talking about Donald Trump's visit to Ireland next weekend. 48:13 Also, just to let you know that this weekend's subscription edition is something different. It's a recording of a live event that I did with Paul Howard last week at the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire last Sunday night about his new book, A Nation Once Again. So it's sort of a different political podcast, but it is talking about a united Ireland, albeit in a more humorous vein. So hopefully you'll enjoy that if you want to listen to that on the subscription edition. But Trump coming next weekend. 48:42 It looks like now that this is going to be very carefully managed, Anya, in that all of Dublin he's going to get to see is the Phoenix Park. It looks like the Phoenix Park will be shut down to make sure for security reasons. And he will be in three locations in the Phoenix Park. He will be at Orison Ucturon to meet with President Connolly. He will go to Farmley to meet with Micheál Martin or Taoiseach. And then he will go to the ambassador's residence, to his buddy Ed Walsh there, before heading down to Doonbeg for the golf on the Sunday. 49:16 How much sympathy do you have for President Connolly, who the last time when he visited in 2019 as president, apparently was part of... 49:25 An outdoor protest or singing of songs and chanting and all the rest of it. She won't be doing that this time, will she? 49:32 No, and I expect that she will be presidential in all her dealings. I did laugh yesterday. What started as a courtesy visit by last night was a brief courtesy visit. And all of this in and out to the oars could last all of 30 minutes. 49:48 You could say a lot in 30 minutes on you. 49:50 You could and it's interesting to see opposition politicians like looking at Paul Murphy last night of People Before Profits recognise she has no choice but to meet the US President but that he has an expectation that she will express her views and he went on to say these are views shared by the majority of the Irish public and Labour leader Ivana Batchik yesterday said that she would expect that the President will robustly express her views when she meets... Mr. Trump. So those, the coalition that helped get her to ORS and Uhturan are very public in saying we, you know, we respect the fact that she has to meet him, but we hope and expect that she will express her views behind closed doors. 50:31 And as you say, she has no choice. She did say in the final days, of the presidential campaign last year, that she would meet him, that she would be presidential. And when she was pressed on it, as she said, obviously, if the topic of genocide were to come up in such a format, that she would contribute. But I expect it will be brief. It'll be a courtesy call. There won't be any ringing off the peace bell. There won't be any. turning of sods, planting a tree at the oars. It'll be in and out. And we may never know what exactly gets said between President Connolly and Donald Trump. 51:02 Yeah, and I wonder will the cameras be allowed outside on the steps and will we see steam coming out of Trump's ears as he leaves, giving out about, what did that woman say to me? 51:10 Yeah, it'll be interesting because I'm sure politicians must really think about that handshake moment and how you want to show up in photography that is going to last the ages. 51:20 Yeah, will she be smiling as the handshake is made or not? 51:22 Yeah, because that's... 51:24 Leo. 51:25 Leo. Yeah, look, just like the last visit, this is a golf trip and he's going to work in a few meetings. Last time it was the Taoiseach, which is me and the ambassador, of course, and I think this time he's going to work in the present too. But this is a golf trip funded largely by the US taxpayer and the Irish taxpayer. 51:42 There won't be any or much political substance to it whatsoever. And I think when he goes to the IRS, it's going to be a very short meeting. It probably won't be on camera. So perhaps the only thing we will see is the handshake. There won't be a press conference afterwards. And I think in the privacy of the meeting, and it may well be a short meeting, I'm sure that the president will raise issues of concern, including issues around foreign policy, whether it's Iran or Palestine or whatever. 52:08 It'll be a long list. 52:10 Well, yeah, well, you can never mention everything, but, you know, I would be surprised if she doesn't do that. Should she take the opportunity to stick it to her? 52:19 But what does that mean, to tell them off? 52:22 Yeah, you've made a complete hymns of this attack on Iran. It's been dreadfully orchestrated. There's consequences for all of us. And then also that we, the Irish people, are not anti-Semitic, but we believe that what Israel is doing in Gaza, with your support, is entirely wrong. 52:41 Well, look, she may do those things. Should she? 52:46 Only she can judge that in the moment. But my, you know, my instinct would be yes. And, you know, we saw, for example, Mio Martin when he was there as Seashook raising issues. 53:00 I don't think, you know, the only really bad meeting that I've ever seen Donald Trump have was with Zelensky. You know, most of his meetings actually go quite well. You saw how well the meeting went with Mamdani, for example. 53:12 But you have to suck up to him. 53:17 I can't see Catherine Connolly sucking up. 53:20 But it's also not that he really cares what you say either. So, you know, she's not going to verbally abuse him or be impolite. You don't invite somebody into your house and insult them. And when you're absent in the country, you don't behave in that way. So I think what she will do is mention and raise some of these issues in a way that is firm and polite. And he won't really care anyway. And then he'll go off and play the golf and watch the thing and have dinner. That's the sad situation that we're in. 53:48 And you would assume she will have language that is very diplomatic. You think back to her St. Patrick's Day message where she talked about the normalization of war can never be accepted. Now, she never named the United States. She didn't call out any country, but everybody who listened and read that speech on St. Patrick's Day knew exactly what she meant. So you would presume the diplomat that she is, she will find a formula of words and phrases to get her point across. 54:16 But we may never know. 54:17 And it will have no impact on any decision being made in Washington. That's the sad truth of it. 54:23 True. One last thing. Nigel Farage, and I know, Leo, you've spoken about him and his corrupt behavior on many occasions on this podcast, but I didn't see it last night, Onya. I think you did. The Channel 4 Sting, would that be the right way? 54:40 Undercover investigation, yeah. People posing as American business people and already this morning we're seeing the rumblings. 54:49 What do they do with Farage? Do they offer him money? 54:52 So to two senior officials, basically offering money and officials being seen to suggest ways that you might circumvent donations law. 55:02 would be the implication. And obviously Farage and the party have come out today. 55:08 So is Farage directly involved us? 55:09 No, no, no. This is his officials. Two senior officials. 55:13 But at the end, it's that the plan is laid out to him and his answer is thank you, thank both of you. So you need to watch this because there's two or three clips. And one is with one of his aides who talks about how Nigel being number 10 and they talk about an amount which is half a million pounds. And then it's agreed that in order to get around the rules around foreign donations, the father would give the money to the son who must be a UK citizen or something. And that's the way the money would be funneled to Reform UK. 55:44 This is explained to him over pints in a pub and over lunch or dinner. And Faraj thanks them both, both father and son. So this is a police matter now. This is not just a matter of parliamentary standards. There will have to be a police investigation. He will do the usual thing, which is to say... It's all the establishment setting me up. 56:09 Farage and co. will claim entrapment and I think they've already made approaches to the police to make that accusation. Obviously the opposition parties are already saying well this is potentially in violation of UK that you can only take donations if you're a UK registered voter or a UK registered company. But Farage is already out this morning saying we've been the target of a hoax and this was entrapment and the two officials have been temporarily stood down, but I think one has already this morning expressed the hope and the ambition that they'll return to work soon. 56:44 But again, like a lot of these right-wing populists around the world who masquerade as patriots and nationalists, once again, very clearly on the payroll of foreign interests. And it's amazing that people Don't call out for what it is. 57:04 And he's Teflon coated. He'll get away with this. 57:08 That's what we're going to find out. You know, it's pretty clear that there's a huge number of people in the US, not quite a majority, but not far off it, who know what Donald Trump is and don't care. 57:20 Let's see now how this plays out, both in the UK and also in France, where Marine Le Pen may well be elected president next year. She's ahead in the polls. 57:28 Like, she's guilty of what she did. She stole money off the European Parliament and used it for her own party and her own interests. So, you know, it is a big test in many ways. 57:38 It's a test. 57:39 Do European voters in places like the UK and France really care if their politicians are corrupt or not? 57:45 But this is a rules-based system, regardless of egos and personalities, and it is now going to be tested. And you would think, given precedent and history and legacy of UK politics, if there are allegedly any rules broken, we will find out and you would assume a process and investigations will follow. 58:03 And Faraj... and reform are not in a position to kill the investigation because they don't have control over the police and over the judiciary in the way that Trump has in the United States where he's been able to kill various investigations. 58:17 But you can also see why when these people get into power, and we saw it in Hungary and Poland and elsewhere, exactly why they want to take over the courts and the police and other elements of the state. 58:28 We will leave it there. Leo Faradkar, thank you both very much for being with us. As I said, we have our special with Paul Howard available to subscribers from Sunday. Marian McKeown and myself will be talking about Donald Trump and lots of other things to do with America in Wednesday's edition. And then we'll be back with the main edition next weekend. Until then, from me, Matt Cooper, thank you for being with us.