Once, years ago, I met an agriculture minister in the grounds of Leinster House and took the opportunity to ask about the opposition’s allegations that he was frontloading farm grants to “buy votes” in advance of local and European Parliament elections.
Here is something you did not know: the PPS numbers of about 20,000 Ukrainian refugees have become inactive here since Ireland first offered temporary protection, in March 2022, for people displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The issue of immigration has once again reached a new height, rising by 15 percentage points to 41pc of respondents reporting it in their top two priorities for the country to deal with.
When Leo Varadkar stepped down as taoiseach one of his more interesting reflections was that he hadn’t been bold enough. He noted a lot of the advice to him was essentially cautious. He regretted following the advice and instead thought he would have done better in the job had he trusted his gut.