It was an incredibly busy week in Irish politics. Government, media and the general public were quite shocked by the resignation of Finance Minister Paschal Donoghue. Thus meant that Cabinet Ministries had to be reshuffled, and into the senior Ministry of Education and Youth came Hildegarde Naughten, a big achievement for Ms. Naughten, a first for Fine Gael in the Galway West constituency, and a first minister for the constituency since Éamon Ó Cuív was a minister back in 2011. We discussed and congratulated the appointment with Hildegarde Naughten.
Staying with education now, and Scoil an Chroí Naofa National School in Ballinasloe has been waiting for a new school build for some 24 years. There've been a number of false starts and false promises, and the school has really intensified a campaign, searching for locals and people interested in this area to sign up and demand a school build to be put top of the agenda in the Department of Education. We discussed this on the programme with the Principal of Scoil an Chroí Naofa, Christine Connor.
It's a pivotal time for the Irish farming community and farming in general right across the European Union. The Mercosur trade agreement will be debated and voted on in the European Parliament this coming Monday.
Now, we've been discussing this throughout the course of the week on Galway Talks, and we had Ciarán Mullooly, Independent Ireland MEP for the Midlands–North-West constituency, on the programme. He has a number of concerns with the Mercosur trade agreement in its current form as they seek to get assurances that Irish farming will not be left uncompetitive with South American countries who may not be up to the regulatory standards that we have here in Ireland and across the European Union.
We discussed this on the programme with MEP Mullooly and also farming in general.
Now, as Ireland gets ready to hold the Presidency of the European Union next year, security of our nation and topics like neutrality really come to the fore.
But the situation this week with the spy ship which is coming down by the coast of Scotland has really geared up talk on what the Russian threat exactly is and are we best placed and prepared here in Ireland to deal with that threat?
We discuss it on the programme with Dr. Brendan Flynn, who is from the School of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Galway.
