Inside Politics with Hugh Linehan

Harry McGee and Jack Horgan-Jones join Hugh Linehan to look back on the week in politics:

Today the Government announced that it will stall the planned increase to fuel excise duty that was due to come into effect at the start of September. The increases for September and October 1st will no longer go ahead. A recall of the Dáil next Friday to pass this measure is looking likely. The decision comes after the Government faced pressure from Coalition backbenchers as well as members of the Opposition. On Thursday night Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald wrote to Taoiseach Micheál Martin demanding the Dáil be recalled for a vote to delay the planned reversal of excise duty cuts.

Sunday’s tragic collision on the M9 motorway left five teenagers dead and three sisters and a 7-year-old child in serious condition. The tragedy raises questions about Garda pursuit capabilities and training and the responsibility of social media platforms like TikTok to respond to footage of dangerous driving and joyriding shared on the platform.

An aide for Tánaiste Simon Harris has come into the spotlight after The Irish Times reported on social media posts where he mocked teachers for being work-shy and deemed the public “racist”. John Kelly is Harris’ constituency director who deleted his X account after he was questioned about numerous posts. Comments that are now deleted refer to Britain’s Prince Harry as a “snowflake” and call US president Donald Trump a “moron”.

Plus, the panel picks their favourite Irish Times pieces of the week, including the decline in number of Catholic baptisms in Ireland, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate leading the polls in Saxony-Anhalt election and the ridiculousness of “Woke 1.0”.

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There is deep support in Ireland for the Palestinian cause. But why? And is Ireland truly an outlier in its attitudes to Palestine and Israel?

Academics Miceal Canavan and Liam Kneafsey surveyed over 1,500 people to gauge attitudes, investigate the origins of this support and ask whether anti-Semitism plays a role.

Their findings include that Irish people have the highest pro-Palestinian sympathy in Western Europe and that we assign unusually high importance to the conflict despite no direct ethnic, economic or military link.

They test explanations for this, including ideology, party support and perceptions of Irish historical oppression as a heuristic and emotional framework.

Anti-Semitism is also examined. It exists, but does not explain our outlier sympathies, their data suggest.

They talk to Hugh Linehan about their paper and how they interpret what they’ve discovered.

Miceal Canavan is a lecturer in Politics & International Studies at Ulster University. Liam Kneafsey is an assistant professor in Political Science at Trinity College Dublin.
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Jack Horgan-Jones and Ellen Coyne join Hugh to look back on the week in politics:

Simon Harris has lobbied the European Commission over the prospect of Ireland's Central Bank once again being responsible for approving Israeli state bonds. Opposition parties have said the bonds are used to raise money for Israel's military campaigns. Ultimately, aside from some political messaging, it's an issue the Government can do little about.

Excise cuts implemented in response to last spring's fuel protests are due to start tapering next month, just as fuel prices are beginning to rise again. With the disruptive protests still a painful memory and the Budget coming into view, Jack Chambers and Simon Harris are in an unenviable position. How will they play it?

News that the Department of Children and Equality will spend money on a campaign to warn about the misogyny of the “manosphere” and “tradwife” influencers who “promote restrictive, stereotypical roles for women and girls” has enraged culture warriors and prompted a debate on the socioeconomic pressures that make working and caring in the home an impossibility for many families. Should the Government stay out of such debates and focus instead on structural issues that hold people back from living their lifestyle of choice?

The Government's recent lack of transparency around two reports, one on Aughinish Alumina and another on data centres, left a lot to be desired.

Entertaining documents released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act have cast light how two prominent pols - Mayor of Limerick John Moran and Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan - go about their business.

And finally the panel pick their favourite IT stories of the week.

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Hugh Linehan and Pat Leahy close their series on the PDs. In 1997 the party runs a disastrous campaign, falling from 10 seats to four. But they still enter government with Fianna Fáil, with Mary Harney their sole cabinet minister.

Their real influence comes through Charlie McCreevy, effectively a PD inside Fianna Fáil, whose close friendship with Harney drives a tax-cutting agenda during the boom years.
Facing wipeout in 2002, Michael McDowell rescues them with a Ranelagh lamppost stunt and an ingenious slogan. But the next term in government is less successful.

McDowell takes the leadership in 2006 just as the Mahon Tribunal investigates Bertie Ahern. Why does he choose to stay in coalition rather than pull the plug?

The 2007 election reduces the PDs to two seats. Does the party have another fightback in them?

Finally Pat and Hugh deliver their verdict on the Progressive Democrats and ask where that centre-right energy now resides in the Irish political scene.
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In the second of three episodes on the rise and fall of the Progessive Democrats, Hugh and Pat pick up the story on the eve of the 1987 general election with the PDs riding a wave of energy and Fianna Fail's Charles Haughey chasing the overall majority that always eluded him.

The party's first outing at the polls is a triumph: 12 per cent of the vote, 14 seats and third place ahead of Labour, much of it carved out of a collapsing Fine Gael. Haughey falls two seats short. Without O'Malley's new party, would he finally have had his majority?

Instead, a minority Fianna Fáil government, propped up by Fine Gael's "Tallaght Strategy", embarks on savage spending cuts and commits to tax cuts, policies the PDs demanded.

The PDs' successes bring a problem: when your opponents adopt your programme, what are you for? By 1989 the party is squeezed from both sides and in the next election it slumps to six seats. But again, no party wins a majority. This time the solution brings the PDs to power, changing Irish politics forever.
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