Carbon, Commuting, and Corruption

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4:11as 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 optimizes its pillars for the long term. This approach is designed to create durable value from the ground up. To learn more about investing in, are 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 Pat Tupar. We're joined today by Formatis Shokli, Over-Akker and by Onyukar. 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, a health minister, Jennifer Karlin McNeil, and hospital consultants Simon Harris and his savings and investment accounts. Maybe a little bit

5:11on our security spend and also Donald Trump's visit to Ireland, which is coming up next week. But I want to start the work 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. The 1.5 percent increase in average temperatures. Forget about it. We're breaking through that. It's a question of stopping a coin 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 as opposed to knowledge, behavior, in relation to how people do things which emit carbon, but also to raise money which can be put into mitigation measures. And yet we have the situation where the exercise duty on fuel, the restoration to previous rates has been deferred to November, starting November. And a lot of us think that that won't actually happen. The government

6:13will 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 lived their usefulness to an extent. Let's start with you, Onya, 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 exercise duties on the same products? Yeah, there's a massive contradiction, obviously, a play now and attention point between the short term need to respond to what is happening in this polychristus moment and in the markets and doing what they've done in terms of deferring any increases again in the exercise duties. And that can be argued in a 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 responsive 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

7:18that 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 heat waves we've seen the tragic events in the pile. We all know what conditions were like this summer where we went from heat wave to monsoon, whether 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. Now, in my business and organizations and charities, if you want to 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 that carbon tax was well intentioned. You want to ring fence for funding retrofitting EVs charging at home, all of that good stuff. But to your point

8:25there, it was part of this knowledge behavior. And when you are dealing with astronomical energy prices, the question probably does bear asking of well, does that original intent around behavior still stand up? And do we need to instead be looking at a longer term plan here, which is 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? Neil, look, 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 ETI costs more than 100 euros to fill. But as a citizen and as somebody who cares about my community, my country, the plan is, 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

9:25deal with the cost of living crisis. One-offs, temporary measures now entering their fourth year. You know, so twice as long as the measures that were introduced to Vancouver, which were genuiney temporary. So there are anyway a few weeks going on 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 fee of currency. Things cost more than they did 10 years ago. 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 income's policy to bring people's incomes up. So rather than trying to firefight and push back against the waves, the wage 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,

10:28like EV charging points, like retrofitting houses and so on. This year, the biggest selling cars were battery electric vehicles. I think over 60 percent sold this year so far are hybrid plugins or battery-only. Although a lot of environmentalists will tell you that a hybrid is actually not a good thing. And the right-wing effect is that it's better than that. But now the best selling type of car is battery-only. That's something people probably thought wouldn't have happened only a few years ago. We're retrofitting. People are investing to retrofissions, perform energy upgrades at around 30,000 years. Why have you not received a nudge to move electric? Why are you still here? I know there's an argument. I should confess it's not my car. We're one car old. But I mean, there is the argument that you should run an old car into the ground, that environmentally, even if it's running on a 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

11:31car into the ground. I don't know if that actually is. But given that diesel and petrol are expensive, from your case, diesel, why not? 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, on August, which was great. I looked at the bill yesterday. Did you care for it? Yeah, electric garland owes me 100 euros. It's really great. Now, I know that's going to change over the winter, but really glad we made that investment. Look, we could afford to. The first time I've got a government grant since I was a student, so it was nice to get one of those things. On the car, what's actually thinking about changing it next year? Because it's hidden 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 the cost of petrol, the cost of diesel, the cost of home heating oil will rise over time. You should invest in new technologies over the next couple of

12:31years 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 liter. That's a toky different message to prices are going to drift up over time. If the policy is now to keep prices under two euros a liter, maybe I will defer my plans to change my vehicle and odds in my two. That's the whole point of the carbon tax. 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 heating oil. But I think if you get into rolling deferrals of the carbon tax, then the message changes. The message is now that it's government policy to keep the price of petrol and diesel down and home heating oil 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. That does seem very problematic,

13:35though, whether intentional or accidental, that the two-year-old threshold, because that's hope and optimism as a strategy, hoping that this is canal that will be straight up. Straight up who moves, rather, that you will have an negotiated agreement that we will see prices come down globally. But the question does bear asking of what is government responsibility? Then when it comes to all of these ex-ice 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. 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 hope the electric car. And I do think this does need to be prioritized by government. But when you watch the Tonist, this week, talk about that the trajectory for the carbon tax was set before the war in Ukraine, before President Trump and Rahm was involved in this conflict. And he's talking about how these global shocks, cotton have been, obviously, forecast,

14:35and that merits reflection. But you look at the T-shock yesterday, Meehill Martin coming out and saying the carbon tax would be considered, but he was a little bit more circumscented. 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. So are you going to say, right, well, we 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? Now, see, there's another thing in relation to the carbon tax. 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. 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 are they actually, but benefit are they actually getting for it. And also they feel that whatever we do in Ireland is minus

15:41school and 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. So they look at what's the point of these carbon taxes? Yeah, well, look, the carbon tax was never popular. It was brought in 2010, then, Finnegael Green government, our FinaFall Green government just that long ago, and we pause it actually for a while when we were in government and used taxis instead, and then then kind of started increasing it again. The key change we made was typothecatus, which officials hate, an economist hate, 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 lands, tell people with fuel poverty. And I think that helps to improve acceptance. If people know, it doesn't just go into the general past that it goes into helping people in fuel poverty,

16:44green 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. But in terms of our role to play in the world, like I understand that argument to our only small players, we only count for less than 1% of the global emissions, but 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 the poll, for example, who are bearing the Brontvusha in the last few weeks. And then also if a rich country like Ireland doesn't take climate action, 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. Yeah, and I think we would end up with a real perception problem unless you have something else

17:47to mitigate and you have some alternative to the carbon tax. And to your point there around, yes, we are small island in the ground 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 unrealized. We could still hit 1.5 and exceed that, but bring it back. 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 our penalties. But then why put up the price of public transport? Because this is the story, this is the the NTA, National Transport Authority has agreed to, but the headlines were saying an average 15% increase 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 and I'm not too far from work. I'm coming over here to the studio,

18:48use my leap card. I can tap on for one euro 50 for a short journey. It's not going up to two euro, which is a 33% increase rather than 15%. Now, you could argue quite correctly, that's still good value. It's downside 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 their 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 the motor cars. They might not have cars in the first place. Anyway, 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's our signal does ascend in relation to persuading people to use public transport as an alternative? And you are right. You can be sympathetic to the the cost of doing business for a double and balsa balsa and whatever it might be. And yet it's the signal. It's the perception that you now go out with with an art of like that and listening to Voxpops yesterday,

19:53the 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 of bus routes, time on bus. I just appear off the side of the bus. Can't say there is no such thing. Yes, I personally experience of it. And I think therein is your problem. I think people could go, okay, it's another 30 cent. And we'll 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. I was actually talking to a few people yesterday, some of them, some of them TDs are representing commuter constituencies and that you 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 go-spouses. 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

20:54because of this, but maybe I'm wrong. Well, indeed, one of the things I was told yesterday was Shane Moyner, who know to fena fall was making the argument that this will provide the money for investment in new facilities and new bosses to which you said, well, what about all the bosses that the electric bosses purchased by Dublin Boss? 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 point. Yeah, look, I still don't understand what's going on there. I was at the meeting with Aiman Ryan, Meeho Martin and others when Aiman was understanding on his budget because various projects hadn't come through planning and we took a decision to authorize them to buy the bosses early on the basis that they might be waiting around for six months until the charging infrastructure arrives. This must be two or three years later now. You know, some you 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 a full story, but just to answer your original question, what's happening here is a change

21:57of policy and it's not in significant one. There used to be annual increases in Boston train fairs. That used to be the norm. A decision was taken, I think, in 2018-19. It was the finnigate minority government. Before the Greens got into office, that we would stop annual increases in public transport. We'd increase the level of state's invention and that was about encouraging people. Why did you do that? To encourage people to use public transport as simpler as that 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 fairs 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 fairs. That is a significant change in policy. I'm not sure it's the right one. It comes at a

23:00time when it seems that government policy is to find 100 million a month to keep petrol and diesel below two cents a liter, but not find any money to keep the two-year affair. 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. Maybe that will change the next few months, but where is the strategy? The public sector unions are not happy with this as well, 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 about SIP2 and FORSA. It's 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 is yet there are no new talks with their employer in relation

24:03to pay increases. They're also making the point, and we actually had Owen Reddy, who is the from the Irish Congress of Trade unions here on Patiparra 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 and 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. And this always feels cyclical. We come to a point in the calendar of their old broad end and we have weeks of negotiations and posturing. 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 balleted on strike action and we have

25:06what? Zip 2 and 4 so far, Canton for 160,000 public sector workers, balloting on potential strike action. And it does seem strange that we are here on the cost 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. 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 upfront, whereas as we know, traditionally, all of these talks you come to pay last. Government would have been the ones, I think particularly the finance minister Jack Chambers say, we want to talk, we're just not going to do it, we're a precondition hanging over us. So we're kind of stuck in 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

26:11weeks out from a budget. Like how do you as a government now go and forecast your payroll bill without talks commencing and having something figures and numbers to input into your very complicated complex spreadsheet for 2027 and beyond. And obviously unions feel emboldened because of the fuel protests earlier this year of maybe thinking is there a different way to negotiate with government that got what got what got us here is not going to be the thing that got us there. Well indeed, there was one 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 which Jack Chambers since he became Minister for Public Expenditure and he feels do I need to be a protestor to get more access to the minister. So what do you think is going on here Leo? 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 has agreed before the last one expires.

27:13So and the consequence of that is that public servants, our teachers, our doctors, our 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 in in piercine means they're actually worse off in real terms and that's a long time again since that's happening. The irony of that is is that last year when Pascal Donohoo in his last budget as Minister for Finance decided not to adjust the tax credits and tax bans leaving people were so remember challenging them on this on the last word and he said more or less these words when people are going to have to go and negotiate with their employer get a pay rise to ensure that they can maintain their standard living. So here we have the private sector and the private sector a lot of people did. 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.

28:16Like there will you know there will be a deal in the end because there always is and I think the parameters of that are roughly there it's it's quite significant pay increases to compensation public sector workers for inflation. The government will have to carry a signal that there will be tax packages in this budget and future budgets. I'm fascinated now to see trade union supporting indexation of tax bans and credits when I was in office they were against us and they were critical of us. Now they see the effect of not that not happening in one year and their members have turned on them and they've changed their position. I think Brendan Hilden once quipped that labor's greatest achievement in power was to turn the over-adcor into a social democrat. So perhaps my greatest achievement was to turn the trade union movement into income tax cutters. It's great great to see them calling 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. Josh Tame was one interesting piece in the Irish Times a few weeks ago and he pointed out that just since 2020 an extra 70,000 full-time

29:22public servants have been hired. Like that's not sustainable so they'll have to be an agreement. Yeah but yet we also still have gaps in public service employment. We need more cars than we need more car money. We need more nurses. So there's certain types of position and presumably you also have to make those positions well enough saying to an average people today. 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 public park that's probably not affordable. Yeah and we're afraid of going because they can't all be obviously nurses and guardian 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 wear? Yeah well like those figures are available and there has actually been a big increase in frontline staff and they'll service not the case with the guardian for example. Teachers arguably do. We need more of them like the number of children and schools gone down. Now maybe we do in certain areas but you but coming up move people from one area to other for example.

30:23So are the bulk of those 70,000 people going into administration rules? No but there are there are a lot that have gone into management administration and you do need those people by the way. So how many of you need? 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. Yeah. What 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. Remote working which obviously has been a big probably incentive for some public sector workers and civic workers. 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

31:24protest and strike action because I feel like so many people are at their with end and can't take any more strife and turmoil. 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? The question though you know when you're in government you can't always stop a strike. You know sometimes the unions need to have a strike and I'm not sure if that's the space through at the moment maybe they are 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 they have to get to a deal and they're to settle dispute they also have to get their unions union members to vote for us 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 Danzen road at 4 a.m. when they

32:25probably made the deal at midnight you know the last day before we down on the door no storm but you know it's all part of the game of industrialisation so I shouldn't say game but the strategy of industrialisation is where we're in order to get your agreement ratified you have to demonstrate to your members there is nothing yeah but but has it got to the point now and maybe it has that the union leaders feel they need a strike it might just be one day strike it might just be worked 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 also allow venting and the anger to be okay we need check back I want to come back and talk with Jennifer Carl McNeil on 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 Boller 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

33:26it's answering a critical question how to invest in the sustainable future in real tangible terms it's answer lies in three areas the energy transition the places we live in shop and the future of our food supply the Greenman Group strategies 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 the greenman.group Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applaud those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's

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35:35the highly skilled freelance professionals with proven track records so you can hire with confidence upward gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise so you can fill critical skill gaps launch projects faster and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount with business plus you can access the top 1% of talent on upwork AI powered shortlisting delivers a curated shortlist of top freelancers match to your goals in under six hours no endless searching required thousands of growing businesses already trust upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support it's free to sign up and posting a job is easy visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free that is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow that's u-p-w-o-r-k.com upwork.com so welcome back we have on your car and the overall crystal with us so Jennifer Karan McNeil has minister for health once hospital consultants to live up to the terms of our

36:42contracts 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 because there aren't enough for example people there to take the x-rays to do the blogs on the Saturday so also what the hospital consultants are saying is is that there's not enough of these other people does not enough of them that for every one thousand and the population in Ireland there's two hospital consultants the EU average is three so what happens how does this get sorted out because i think people Leo want in your four minutes to for health they want to be able to see doctors at the weekend to get things dealt with they believe that when doctors are on public only contracts that are paying anything between

37:44about two fifty to three forty hundred thousand 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 and more people who do the blogs and all the rest of it are without actually be paid for a bike 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 seven hundred million over that may be part of the way reducing that is to make full-time appointments you tell us you know this better yes well look like both sides have a point here the consultants and the doctors are right to say that that does 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 hospitals fed the community too and 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

38:49emissions on weekends because there are fewer staff and a lot of visitors and so on so you have to have the whole picture if you're going to deliver that kind of increased productivity that the point that the department 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 staff has got number of staff has gone up by x percent the amount of work done is 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 right be worrying the department and and the people in the Department of Public Spenditure 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 the rate of the rate of it you know the rate of activity has gone up a bit but the number of staff has gone up a lot what you put that down to because you would have a natural assumption of productivity therefore should increase but yeah but about to is actually gone down and activity has gone up a bit but but productivity has actually

39:50gone down so yes so why why is that now the one answer and it's part of the equation is older patients more complex patients the work has changed but I don't think that fully that fully adds up an ornia of course as I mentioned doctor Gabrielle Coller and they heard of the Irish Hospital Consensus Association did a part to par recently was available to subscribers still learned to listen to when she points the picture of what has been going on but when I spoke to her in 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 which really struck me in surprising I know a lot of the time that the representatives of the likes of the Irish Hospital consultants of the Irish Medical Organization the nurses whatever they'll do most of their work dealing with the officials and 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

40:55and the working hours of consultants but at least they would have sat down face-to-face because I think what Leo is talking about there requires it's ambitious but 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 priorities she stakeholders that there should be that face-time where you're checking back in on ranking on your priorities are these the right milestones what the data trends look like it's just a good best practice and I see that I chair a future or she's different organizations I'm involved in that when you can have that face-time sometimes the onset gets said it's just human nature human connection you can see the hard things about hard things but problems solve 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

41:57can't be seeing that in person than through sometimes and you get understanding exactly and share division share purpose and leave again we commit into 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 that you would like to think there's a roster that means you can't see checking back in and the other bishie of donors of course face-to-face is you're trying to minimize curveballs and surprises like no senior leader minister presumably wants to be dealing with a knee jerk controversy that they didn't see coming that you have something read into it you can look around corners you can scenario plan which made I'm surprised the minister hasn't met the consultants formally or informally for so long yeah well like we haven't heard Jennifer Carwick Niels side of that story yeah you talk about that you mean you you mean people in different contacts you know she may have spoken of their conference you know she might have met them in

42:59different forums but it'd be standard enough for a minister to meet the key stakeholders at least once a year you're in the main unions the main companies whatever but look that's that's that's that's that's that that her answer that question if I could do it all over again and I probably wouldn't get away with it I think one thing would work that would work on our service would be a bonus system for staff and not just doctors all staff where you get part of your pay or are top-ups to your pay based on the amount of activity done and you know I worked almost entirely in the public sector but I worked in general practice as well and I've been been in an out of private hospitals like general practice in Ireland is extraordinary efficient because largely doctors are paid per patient they see and 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 theaters shutting down a 3 30 or 4 o'clock on a Friday if the list is supposed to star at

44:02eight o'clock it does star at eight o'clock and there's no reason incentive in the public system to get seven patients through rather than six that morning it doesn't make any difference to get paid these acts same and they do know the countries it's it's it's done in Australia to desu sense the NHS in UK where people are actually incentivized for increased activity now there can be perverse aspects of that too unless there are operations being done people being rushed to clinics but but maybe better the incentive system that seems to work in Ireland is that you have 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 you seem that hospitals are making facilities available in their hospitals to the doctors to do private work on the basis that is additional income from the hospitals as well to help pay their bills yeah that's like the Indian sourcing yeah I'd have to I don't have to look at that again because I thought a lot of

45:03that had changed largely because of the public only contract still happening a bit but but you know but I suppose it's almost that that does speak to my point if if if if if this hospital can in can can incentivize their own staff on a fee provide and basis at the weekend why couldn't do the system where that operates as norm all we grand in all year and that there is there is there is a bonus for activity okay let's move on one of the things in the budget we were obviously going to be looking at carbon taxes income taxes all the rest of it but oh yeah Simon Harris has been minister for finance has been making an awful lot of his savings and investment accounts we still don't know an awful lot of the actual granular detail of how these will actually work and I don't think there going to be anything like Charlie McRevy's special savings accounts of a quarter century ago where there was free money coming from the state but what do you us what you think is the upto is there going to be this great interest in it and our people

46:06got to turn out 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 look I think there's definitely merit in it when you look at those figures is it's like 175 billion sitting in our banks at the end of May and when you look at the very low interests rates high inflation that that that money is not working for folks so does feel like there's working capital there that could be applied in lots of better ways I am conscious though all the headlines the speculation for months and weeks there are a lot of people who just do not have savings a month a month or a living paycheck to paycheck and so when we talk about this I'm very conscious of people listening right now and who are like I don't have the privilege of savings they have an overdraft yeah exactly exactly and I'm welcome out of just back to school and all the costs that go with with that but clearly there are people in this country who have become

47:08savers we were known for being spend drifts 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 I think we've looked at some of the Nordic countries as well sweeten to see how 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 will it seems like there'll be a max and I think that's appropriate so that this is wealthy individuals only maximizing 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 society there's a long legacy issue in a country like this where we need 33% of Irish investors are women and we know we have a gender a pig up we know we have a pension gap so for a lot of women they are retiring with roughly 120 grand less than their male

48:14counterparts 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 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 and what is the appropriate amount for them you see Leo my thing with this is that clearly there's an awful lot of people who are saving and

49:18who are looking after their money and are we trying to encourage them to take that money and invest it but invested 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 could be gilts in other parts of the world or whatever and you look at how much of it is actually going to be invested productively in Ireland so I mean I've positive previously an idea you can put a stipulation in around that I think you can give you an option where a chunk is invested in Ireland perhaps in startups and scale ups or you can or you could I think you can make it a provision that a certain amount has to be you see I would have over 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

50:25dividend of maybe just say for sake of argument 5% to be something higher than is available on bank interest that it would be higher than the rate of inflation higher than and you could have a tax free perhaps as an incentive that at least means that people would know they were investing in something that they were doing a national services some kind of that does 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 a lower rate why would you want to but the bottom of the problem probably borrow a moment I think the book of them borrowed I think three hundred percent this yes so if you were to give five then you'd actually drive up the cost of housing you would not be so desired some of the measures that we have a present are driving cost of housing anywhere we also see the SRI are saying that the cost there's an overvaluation of property at the moment is 17% in Ireland 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 on I'm all for encouraging people to invest in in housing and housing instruction but not

51:31if it's going to bring up the cost of housing but you know if the rate of return is too generous that's what 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 and shares in Apple or Amazon or whatever which are looking very very highly priced at the moment and you could see investments international equities end up losing you a lot of money why not make sure that this special fund if there is at least goes into money that's productively invested in Ireland or could even be an infrastructure fund or something like that are good or you could say that a proportion of it has to be in in Irish companies or Irish owned companies 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 I think this could be a very significant and very positive announcement in the budget granted there are a lot of people who are struggling there are also a lot of people who are

52:31saving there's 140 billion or something in house so savings on deposit in Ireland the 175 brings yeah yeah yeah yeah corporate money is one of those people and I have one of them we're 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 actually lost so you know it makes sense to have some precautionary savings in case something goes wrong and you need to fix the roof for a new washing machine but beyond that it makes sense to invest and that's what people in America do for example like one of the big cultural differences between Ireland and Europe on the one hand and America and the other is when you're sitting around the table over a beer and you're talking to Americans they all almost all have investments they have their 401k's 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

53:35where 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 you know that's down to the tax treatment of it okay hopefully that would be good couple of other things I want to talk about justice says well next week in our subscription edition part of America when Marie McHill on Wednesday we will be talking about Donald Trump's visit to Ireland next weekend also just let you know that this weekend subscription edition is something different it's a a recording of a live event that I did with Paul Howard last week at the pavilion theater in Don Liri last Sunday night about his new book a nation once again so it's a sort of a different political podcast but it is talking about a unite at 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 so it looks like now that this is going to be very carefully managed on you in that the olive Dublin he's going to get to see is the

54:35Phoenix Park 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 Orson-Ukteron to meet with President Connolly he will go to farmly to meet with me Hall Martin or T-Shook and then he will go to the ambassador's residence to his buddy Ed Walsh there before heading down to Dune Bag for the on the Sunday how much sympathy do you have for President Connolly who the last time when he visited in 2019 as president apparently was part of an outdoor protest were singing of songs and chanting and all the rest but she won't be doing that this time will she? 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 a courtesy visit on all of this in and out to the ors could last all of 30 minutes and you could say a lot in 30 minutes on yeah you could and it's interesting see opposition politicians

55:39like looking at Paul Murphy last night of people before prophets recognize she has no choice but to me the US president but that he has an expectation that she will express her views and he went on say these are views shared by the majority of the Irish public and Labour leader Evanna Batchick yesterday said that she would expect that the president will robustly express her views when she meets and Mr. Trump's the those the coalition that helped get her to a worse and up drawn 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 and as you say she 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 will contribute but I expect it would be brief it will be a curse he called there won't be any ringing off the peace bell there won't be any turning of sards planting

56:42a tree at the ors it'll be in and out and we may never know what exactly gets said between and I want to look at the camera to be allowed outside on the steps will we see steam coming out of Trump's ears as he leaves given out about one of that woman's age yeah it's the effect because I am sure politicians must really think about that handshake moment and how you want to show up in photography that is going to last the age yeah will she be smiling yeah yeah because that's Leo yeah look look just 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 t-shirt which is me and the master of course and I think this time he's going to work in the president too but this is a golf trip funded largely by the US taxpayer and the Irish taxpayer there won't be any are much political substance to whatsoever and I think when he goes the arse it's going to be 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

57:46president will raise issues of concern including issues around foreign policy whether it's around our Palestine or whatever and yeah well yeah well you can never we can never mention everything but you know I would be surprised if she doesn't do that but it would be in private so but what does that mean to give them tell them off and yeah did you've made a complete hands of this attack on Iran it's been dreadfully orchestrated this 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 isn't entirely wrong well actually may do those things um should she um only she conjudged that in the moment but my you know my my instinct would be would be yes um and you know we saw for example me on Martin when he was there as a seashoek raising raising issues

58:46I don't think you know the only really bad meeting that I've ever seen Donald Trump have was with Zansky you know most of his meetings actually go quite well you know so well the meeting went with Mamdaani for example um uh so it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a super talk to him well yeah food on cam because he has some kind of a sucking up but it's also it's also it's not really not that he really cares what you say either so you know if you know it's you know it she's not going to verbally abuse him or be impolite you don't invite somebody into your house uh and insult them and when you're after into 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 has 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. And she would. That's the sad situation that we're in. And you would assume she will have language that is very diplomatic. You think back to her Simpatrick's day, a message where she talked about the normalization of war can never be accepted. Now she never named the United States.

59:48She didn't call out any country, but everybody who listened and read that speech on Simpatrick'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. But we may never know. And it will have no impact on any decision being made in Washington. That's the sad truth of it. True. One last thing, Nigel Frash. 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. Oh, and I think you did. The channel for sting without being right. That they sort of under cover investigation. Yeah. People posing as a American business people. And already this morning we're seeing. To what do they do with fresh? So they offer money. So to two senior officials, basically offering money and official has been seen to suggest ways that you might circumvent donations law would be the implication. And obviously,

1:00:52Frash and the party have come out today. Frash, directly. No, no, no, no, this is officials. Two senior officials. But at the end, it's that the plan is the plan is laid out to him. And it's and his answer is thank you. Thank you. So the way you need to watch this because there's two or three clips. And one is with one of his his aides who talks about how Nigel will be in 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 far end donations, the father would give the money to the son who must be UK citizen or something. And that's the way the money would be funneled to reform UK. This is explained to him over over points in a pub and over over over lunch or dinner. And and Frash thanks them both both father and son. So this is this is this is this is 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, well, they're going to it's all the

1:01:54establishment setting me up. Frash and Cole 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 a potentially in violation of UK that you can only take donations if you're a UK registered voter or a UK registered company. And but Frash 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've turned to work soon. 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 it out for what it is. And he's Teflon caught us. He get away with this. That's what we're going to find out. You know, it's pretty clear

1:02:57that there's a huge number of people in the US, not quite a majority, but not far off us, who know what Donald Trump is and don't care. Let's see now how this plays out both in the UK and also in France, where Rien Le Pen may well be elected president next year. She's ahead in the polls. 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, that, you know, it is a big test. It's a test. It's a test. All European voters in places like the UK and France really care if their politicians are corrupt or not. 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. And in France and reform are not in a position to kill the investigation because they don't have control over the police and over the

1:03:58judiciary in the way that Trump has in the United States, where he's been able to kill various investigations. But you can also see why when these people get into power, and we saw a jet in Hungary and Poland and elsewhere, exactly why they want to take over the courts and the police and other elements of the state. We believe it there. Leo Bradkar, thank you both very much for being with us. As I said, we have our special report, Paul Howard available to subscribers from Sunday, Mary McHill. Myself would be talking about Donald Trump and lots of other things through with America and Wednesday's edition. And then we'll be back with the main edition next weekend. Until then, for me, Matt Cooper. Thank you for being with us. Poland Cancer is on the rise. It's the second deadliest cancer and the number one cancer killer of people under 50 in the US yet it remains one of the most preventable cancers. If you're 45

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