Good morning.<\/p>\n
Several countries summoned their Israeli<\/a> ambassadors in response to the arrest of pro-Palestinian activists who were sailing towards Gaza<\/a> as part of a \u201cfreedom flotilla\u201d, and their subsequent taunting \u2013 as they knelt on the floor with their hands tied \u2013 by the Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. <\/p>\n Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> last night said the behaviour of the Israeli minister was \u201cdisgusting\u201d and \u201cdisgraceful\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a blight on the Israeli government and other European leaders are likewise calling this out,\u201d Martin said, adding that he would seek to get broader agreement in Europe on reviewing trade relations under the European Union-Israeli Association Agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s no longer tenable that it would be business as usual with Israel, given its scant regard for European Union citizens. The right to protest is a sacred one, within any democracy. The flotilla was in international waters and people were essentially abducted by the Israeli government on the high seas,\u201d Martin said.<\/p>\n Thirteen Irish citizens are understood to have been detained by the Israel Defense Forces<\/a>, including Dr Margaret Connolly, a sister of President Catherine Connolly.<\/p>\n Report here<\/a>. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Be afraid. Yesterday\u2019s news that tech giant Meta would cut 350 jobs<\/a> from its Dublin operation was a lot more than expected \u2013 20 per cent of the workforce as opposed to the 10 per cent expected \u2013 and set off alarm bells in Government about further job losses<\/a> in the sector. <\/p>\n There is a general expectation that the rollout of AI in the coming years will clobber some jobs \u2013 not just in tech but in white collar areas like consulting, law and accounting. Nobody really knows what\u2019s coming. Some tech industry sources have told the Government that as many as 80 per cent of tech jobs could go in the next 10 years. Not all predictions are as apocalyptic. But most of them are not good. It\u2019s our lead story<\/a> this morning.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Opposition to Government: we told you so on rents. There were bad tempered exchanges in the D\u00e1il yesterday between (you\u2019ve guessed it) Miche\u00e1l Martin and Sinn F\u00e9in, as the Opposition sought to hold the Government to account for the surge in rents reported by Daft.ie<\/a> yesterday.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have nowhere to hide,\u201d Mary Lou McDonald told him. \u201cThe highest rents on record and the highest level of evictions since the famine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust plain stupid to go on about the highest evictions since the famine,\u201d responded Martin, and as Eoin \u00d3 Broin got stuck in, \u201cYou have no substance\u201d.<\/p>\n Mary Lou called Martin a \u201csleeveen\u201d, or, in the first official language, a \u201csl\u00edbh\u00edn\u201d.<\/p>\n Marie O\u2019Halloran\u2019s report is here<\/a>. <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n RT\u00c9 bosses made the now familiar journey to Leinster House yesterday to answer questions at the Oireachtas media committee<\/a> about recent controversies involving the reclassification of Derek Mooney as one of the station\u2019s top earners. A wheeze of treating him as a producer rather than a presenter had kept him off the list before. <\/p>\n Director general Kevin Bakhurst \u2013 reasonably \u2013 told committee members that once they found the issue, they acted to correct it. Did Bakhurst give a reasonable account of himself? Yes. Were deputies happy? They were not. Have we heard the last of this? We have not. Jack Horgan-Jones has your debrief<\/a>. <\/p>\n Miriam Lord also observed<\/a>.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n It\u2019s the final day of campaigning in the two byelections<\/a>. Party leaders will be doing a frantic final round of canvassing today \u2013 the elections are expected to be tight, and every vote will count. Polls open at 7am tomorrow. Lots of canvass reports on irishtimes.com<\/a>, including one with Independent Ireland\u2019s Noel Thomas<\/a>. <\/p>\n Best reads<\/p>\n Cracking yarn<\/a> from Martin Wall.<\/p>\n Home to vote? That\u2019s against the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ken Early \u2013 the best soccer writer on these islands \u2013 on how Arsenal won<\/a> the Premier League.<\/p>\n Denis Staunton on the visits of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin<\/a> to China. If you don\u2019t subscribe to his daily briefing, you should<\/a>.<\/p>\n Playbook<\/p>\n After yesterday\u2019s lengthy debate on neutrality (nobody changed their minds), it\u2019s foreign affairs questions first up this morning. After a break for questions to Dara Calleary (wearing his rural development hat), Helen McEntee is back in the hot seat in place of Simon Harris at Leaders\u2019 Questions, who will be off chivvying unsuspecting Galwegians for votes for Se\u00e1n Kyne.<\/p>\n After lunch, Jim O\u2019Callaghan will introduce the Guardianship of Infants Amendment Bill, dubbed \u201cValerie\u2019s law\u201d, which would allow a court to strip guardian rights from a parent who has killed a child\u2019s other parent.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a short day in the Seanad, even by the upper house\u2019s standards. Commencement matters, the Order of Business, a motion without debate, and er that\u2019s it. Adjournment at 11.30am. Plenty of time for a proper lunch.<\/p>\n In the committees, the public accounts committee meets every Thursday morning and today it\u2019s the turn of officials from the climate and energy department to be grilled on their vote. There are other meetings of the joint education and disabilities committee, the Travellers\u2019 issues committee and the Seanad select committee on EU scrutiny. Full details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin will be at the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace in Paris to meet French president Emmanuel Macron. There are various other engagements in Paris during the day before he heads to Rome to meet the Pope and the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni tomorrow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning. Several countries summoned their Israeli ambassadors in response to the arrest of pro-Palestinian activists who were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[42150,39486,2254,22228,42149,37,3694,9097,3998,36320],"class_list":["post-124237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-byelection","tag-dail-eireann","tag-gaza-strip","tag-housing-crisis","tag-inside-politics","tag-israel","tag-israel-defence-forces","tag-meta","tag-micheal-martin","tag-rte"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116611374384238910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}