The mood music around Leinster House this week is one of “nashing teeth” ahead of what’s expected to be a difficult budget announcement on Tuesday.
On today’s podcast, Hugh speaks to our political correspondents Jack Horgan-Jones and Cormac McQuinn who describe a “cold hard reality” that may be to come as government ministers feel they may not get the money they were hoping for.
And its understood Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers has been “frosty” with cabinet colleagues asking for more money for their departments.
All this under the shadow of overrun budgets in education and health, and a failure to agree a public sector pay deal which threatens industrial action the likes of which we haven’t seen for 17 years.
We also ask how the row over an Orange Order parade permitted down the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road in Co. Armagh lays bare the political divisions which have been “frozen in time” since the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
And we pay tribute to our esteemed colleague and parliamentary sketch writer Miriam Lord who retired this week.
Plus, the panel picks their favourite Irish Times pieces of the week; A shift to the right in European politics; Mark Zuckerbergs cash gift to a GAA club in Waterford; and the fallout over Ireland’s nations league clash against Israel.
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