Fianna Fail Think-In

0:00Fina Fault, ED, isn't senators or in Tullamore for the party's annual think-in, setting out priorities for the new dull term including the budget, housing, the cost of living and infrastructure. But with Fina Fault, continuing to trail in the polls and questions still being raised about me, Hall Martin's leadership, there will be plenty for the party to reflect on and join me now. Is the Mealick Fina Fault, ED, call the crowd. Good morning. Good morning, Adam. Thanks for having me on. Thanks very much for being with us. The three largest parties holding their think-ins this week, only around four percentage points separating them in recent polling. But Fina Fault has been consistently polling in third place in recent polls. Call, why do you think that is? What is going wrong for the party? I don't mind. I don't think things are necessarily going on. Those polls fluctuate and there have been times where Fina Fault have been opened down. The reality is in the last elections, not just a general election, in low elections. Fina Fault were dominant there in the last general elections, well, with the more seats. So I don't know.

1:00Look, the next election you could see us increase seats. Some seats could be lost. It's very hard to say in September, 2026, but the election cycle would be like three years from now. So they are interesting. We sometimes pretend we don't look at them. I can't write for a politician, say that that's not true. I think we are followed these. Of course we do. But it's a long way off from elections. I don't sense any chappiness in the water. I'm very focused on my work in the care constituency. And I know other TVs are as well. So look, there's something we read. We follow, but we don't get too distracted. And the real work is managing. Managing your constituency, making sure people are looked after dealing with queries that come in and represent them then in the dial. You know yourself indeed. We've spoken about it and has been mentioned quite a lot over the past few months, the speculation about your party leader's futures. Does it feel sometimes called that the party is spending too much time defending the leadership and maybe not enough time rebuilding its support or being able to focus on the issues that if you

2:05can get on top of them, might ensure that you are part of the government post the next general election, be it housing and health and the very cost of living? Yeah, I think what you've said, there are some of the little things that are not exactly there is too much time spent focused on that. But you can you can you can you understand why do you think it is it is just it's justifiable why there is speculation over? A few a few TVs, I think it's well known some give comments in weekend papers and sometimes to our tea about leadership and all, but that's that's the minority in the parliamentary party who they'd obsessed about this issue too often if you ask me. The media then of course drive it on as well. It's at the Tink in the first questions asked yesterday morning where about his leadership, how long will you hang in there? It's all kind of distractions stuff. We're here to talk about social welfare, health care, housing, the budget is four weeks away now. So that's really where the focus is that it's no different to any other Tink and then just so the public the listeners understand what I think involves.

3:06It's a two day session. It's in Tolamore this year, it's usually on somewhere on the midlands or someplace accessible. We all gather together, TDs and senators and there's various workshops most in lasting about an hour and hour and a half and there are team athletes. So once yesterday were on housing, Northern Ireland's social welfare is up today, health care, agriculture. So TDs, bath ventures in particular like myself would feed into that process. Ideas they've come from constituents, complaints, concepts we have ourselves. There was one idea I floated yesterday which I'd like to go through maybe in a few moments. But yeah, we bring ideas. Some of them will make it into a budget day, some of them won't. And I suppose that's the reality of being in a two-parity government support by independence. We have some says. We don't get I don't get final say in things here, but I start to bring that clear voice into the room. The budget itself, Karl, you know, we do, me, Hall Martin's already been talking about and universal energy credits being off the table.

4:10Jack Chambers saying that if there's any income tax cuts, there'll be modest. So workers shouldn't expect more than a few hundred euro back in their pockets. This is not good music to the ears of the electorate. You know, people expecting a little bit of help in the budget to help with the cost of living will be disappointed to hear what minister Chambers has had to say and there'll be particularly, I guess, disappointed here with me, Hall Martin has had to say in terms of the universal energy credit. So if they're not going to happen, how will people be helped in the budget to deal with energy costs and the cost of living? Years ago before I went to each study economics in UL and the budget was largely a secret until the day it was announced. But in more recent years, politically, the preparation of the budget is probably being zero on Easter time. There's a lot of work going on for months in the budget. And then in terms of media commentary, the analysis of the budget probably starts about three months before it's actually announced. So within that, as a lot of politicians fly clites,

5:11they put up clites of ideas and see how the public reactors and don't order ideas then are dismissed. But this is the tea shock saying, the leader of the country saying that there will be no universal energy credits. Yeah, well, I've heard a tea shake say, and Jack Chambers, there've been things in Tullamore and there've been things in the last few days in all media interviews is that the focus on budget there is around cost of living. It will be around certainly working families because, you know, people can say many things about last year's budget, but I think one of the sharpcomings of it was that people across Claire probably woke up the next day and said, you know, I'm working hard. And I don't think that budget has bettered me. So I think we've really to focus on working families in particular. And we've also to focus on vulnerable people who cannot work. One of my contributions recently actually at the P2File Prelevancy Party and maybe this is controversial, but I'm going to say it. I think there's a cohort of people that they're not able to work because of disability, because of being in firm or they can't get employment, right? And that's always to be the case on employment is there.

6:14We need to save the net for them. We need to have a good social welfare system. But I also traverse the county and the country. And I see young people in the early 20s who are very capable of working. They're choosing that to it or opting out. But I've been saying we need to get a lot of tougher in that. I think social welfare needs to be robust. It needs to be, it needs to pay people well who cannot work. And I deal with my end of people my office every day. It needs to be there for pensioners. It needs to be there for vulnerable people. But I think we need to get a bit tougher in that. In terms of cost of living measures, I think so far we've had this very large package. I think at the moment it's running at 1.2 billion so far to cause exercise to make fuel at the pumps a little bit cheaper. But one thing it hasn't addressed so far has been electricity and the cost of energy. So cost of energy credits you just asked about more and more. I think there's other ways of doing this. On budget there, I do think we need to do something to inject some capital, some money into the pockets of our press families. And that's really what I've been advocating for until I'm more.

7:15Okay, unfortunately we are out of time. We will have to leave there. But I'm not that we'll be speaking to you again before the budget. I call it grow joining us on morning focus.