Hi, my name is Prashant Ganpati. I work for Dell, primarily in Dell Networking. And I'm part of the Dell Open Networking team. Today I'll be talking about how we can build physical networks in different ways using our Open Networking partners to build OpenStack networks and to help you with your OpenStack solution. As you can see, I don't have a title. This is a fairly new team within Dell, which is trying to promote this new initiative of Open Networking. So we end up doing pretty much everything, from product management to sales to talking to partners to building the strategy. So that's what I do in Dell. In my previous life, I was a sales engineer in Dell, covering some very large accounts from a networking perspective. So from agenda, I just put a brief summary of the agenda. I'll be talking about what Open Networking is, what it stands for, what we are trying to achieve through it. And then we'll go into the OpenStack aspect of how our partners are integrating with OpenStack and making physical networking part of it easy to solve so you can focus on your OpenStack solution. And end it with a summary and questions at the end. Before I start, I was thinking, how do I make this presentation to stick out? And how can people remember this? And one thing, if you go to every networking presentation nowadays, what is the one thing everybody keeps talking about in networking presentations? Anyone? Yeah, exactly. And STN is probably more used, overused than an FV. And it's not that I don't like the word, but it's overused and it dilutes the message of what it's actually doing underneath in terms of technology. So one thing I'll promise, I'll not use the word STN in my presentation. I'll hopefully talk more about the technologies that are enabling that particular word. So if you catch me using the word STN, I have some selfie clicker things, and I'll hand them out if someone catches me doing that. So with that, I'll kind of move on to what is Open Networking and how Dell came about doing it. So when I start my career about in the early 2000s, networking was still a black box. You had proprietary ASICs. And I was part of 410, and we used to do that to proprietary ASICs. So once you have a proprietary ASIC at the bottom, you would build OS, which would only work with that ASIC. And then on top, the tools would be ones which could only work with that software. So it was a complete black box, as you can see in the left. That was traditional networking. But around the mid-2000s, commodity chipsets started coming into play. Intel, Fulcrum, Broadcom, bunch of other guys started coming into the picture. And over the last few years, that has become mainstay. Like commodity chipsets and networking has become mainstay. And many companies have successfully implemented it, including Dell. So once that happened, now the next question is, then why are you tying a specific OS to a commodity chipset? Why can't it be like a server?  Why don't you do that with a switch? You automatically assume it comes with that OS. So we wanted to say, hey, Dell has done this before. Dell has disaggregated the server before. Why can't we do that in networking? And working with some very large customers, we realized that's what they've been doing over the last few years. They took commodity white boxes and ran their own OSes on it. Their reasons for doing it were different. They wanted to control their own destiny. Their skills were huge. They wanted to control costs, get fixes faster, lots of other things. But there is value of doing that in the enterprise as well. And that's what Dell saw. And one of the key things that happened as we went along trying to do this is companies like Humilis and Big Switch came along who said, we are a software company. We're going to build a software that can run on a commodity-based switch. And so what we decided was we're going to jump headfirst into this, right? Not test the waters, jump headfirst. So Dell, having acquired 4.10, has its own OS. It's called OS9 now, OS9. So we will support that on our ON switches, right? But what open networking is, is we started saying, we will support other OSes on it as well. So we started with Humilis and Big Switch on our only bootable Dell open networking switches. It's our flagship product. It's not a separate line of switches. It's the same switches we sell to everybody. And along with that, we support our own OS. We just introduced another one called IP Infusion. I'm not going to spend too much time on it because it's not related to OpenStack. But what we bring to the table with IPI is MPLS. So we'll be supporting MPLS on the same switches, layer 2, layer 3 VPN, LDP. So you can solve cases like edge routing and things like that, lower-end routers. So we're bringing that into the mix as well. So we have 4 OSes now. That's our stable right now. And what we hope to do is something on the right, right? So we have Merchant Silicon. Primarily, we are based on Broadcom. We use Broadcom chipsets. Going down the line, there are others coming along, Melanox, Barefoot, Cavium. Lots of guys coming in in the 100 gig play. We have Dell, you know, the top of rack, single chip. One RU boxes are very simple to make. That's our standard commodity hardware. On top of it, we support all these 4 OSes. And all of these bring in the whole set of new orchestration tools, automation tools, the way you can manage it. So it opens up a whole number of choices for the customer. Customer can decide and evaluate which OS works best for his environment and use it that way without having to rip and replace hardware. And you're not locked into hardware. That's the key message. You don't have to rip and replace hardware when you want to try different things. So that's what is primarily open networking. I think there is a general network paradigm shift. This has been received really well in the industry and we're seeing a lot of traction. So that's our primary of what open networking is and what we're trying to achieve through it. Before moving on, I also wanted to kind of mention another aspect of how Dell is driving innovation in this industry, right? Dell networking, what we realized is we opened up the operating system environment. We allowed different OSs to run on our switch. But underneath, the silicon has an SDK and a networking operating system has to program to that SDK. If a new silicon comes along, I have to program that SDK. Now, many people have developed their proprietary abstraction layers, but there's nothing open out there. It's hard to do for a company to kind of program to a new silicon all the time, right? So we collaborated with Microsoft, Broadcom, Melanox, some of the chipset guys as well as Microsoft, and defined a software abstraction layer called PSI, Software Abstraction Interface. It's a low-level abstraction interface, C++ APIs. But if the chip is compliant to it and the networking OS is compliant, can understand it, then all they have to do to bring on a new silicon is to talk to the PSI layer. And we contributed to OCP. It's been well received. Multiple chip guys, multiple OS guys have kind of jumped on it. So hopefully this will become a standard and enable more chip vendors to come into the play as well, because competition is always good. Broadcom has done a great job trailblazing this, but competition is good for innovation and it brings the best out of the industry. So if you can see what Dell networking has done, it's opened up the OS environment as well as the chip environment. And now you get a whole set of permutations of combinations of which OS you can play with which chip and get different use cases out of it. So I think we'll drive the time to market as well as innovation in this industry. Before we get into the specifics of what our partners can do on our switches with respect to OpenStack, I just have to call out the Dell and Red Hat Enterprise Cloud solution, which is the main aspect of our booth and as well as our presentations here. It's a very closely integrated solution with Dell hardware and Red Hat software. If you've not heard about it in other sessions already you should check it out. It's a pretty good solution. It can be predefined as well as custom made and I'm not the expert on it but there are other people around here who can talk to you more about it. I have to talk about that. So going into why Dell Open Networking and OpenStack, where's the connection? Physical networking has a role in OpenStack but it's kind of the invisible part. You just want it to work so that you can focus on OpenStack and that's where the connection comes. You just want it to work and it doesn't always work. That's where we see the integration. So I just put down a table of why I thought it's relevant in other ways too. One key thing is we are promoting commodity-based chipsets in our switches and OpenStack is also ideally should be working on commodity hardware. That's where OpenStack is best at. Choice of networking OS. We offer a choice of networking OS.  So you get a choice of whether you want to go all open source and do your own thing or you want to leverage commercial vendors to do some of the different aspects of it. So similar principles. You know, long-term CAPEX and OPEC savings with Dell Open Networking, right? You get choices. You decide what works best for your environment. You know the cost of your hardware and your software.  So long-term you get OPEC savings as well. Similar principles in OpenStack too. Eventually you want to streamline your DevOps operations. You want to have a common DevOps layer which kind of manages everything and then you have specialists in each area. So again, long-term CAPEX and OPEC savings if you do the OpenStack solution right. And at the end of the day you want to speed up the innovation, right? You want to speed up innovation and time to market through Open Networking. And similar principles come in OpenStock. Similar things happen when, you know, at the end of the day you want the OpenStack solution to increase your business, whatever your business is to bring in more, you know, do the right analytics to gain the leads that you need to generate more business from your segment, right? So similar principles, I think. So that's why Dell Open Networking is relevant in the OpenStack arena. You know, during the run up to this presentation you know, there were a lot of questions, right? So my physical networking aspect people were just trying starting out with OpenStack or I've been using it, you know, questions come up like, should I use layer two? You know, traditionally enterprises have used layer two. How do I go to layer three? Do I need overlay? Do I not need overlay? Everybody's talking about overlay. Maybe I should do overlay, right? That's not the right way to approach it, right? So these questions come up. What about security implications? HA, multi-tenancy, you know, can we actually try this out without spending a lot of things, right? Like, a lot of people I meet are all proof of concepting OpenStack, right? So can we try all this out without having to spend a lot of money before we make what is the best way to do this, right? So these are the key questions that come up. And Dell Open Networking, I think, enables all of this, right? It helps answer some of these questions. It also helps you kind of say, hey, you know, we can test, evaluate different OS options on the switches, see what works best for our environment, and then decide what is best suited for the overall OpenStack solution. Now, diving in deeper into the two partners I'm going to focus on in this presentation is a cumulus and big switch. Big switch is a very simple message. It's one big switch, okay? So it's simple plug-and-play of your fabric that you have connecting to the controller, right?  After that, everything is managed from the controller. That is your supervisor of your big switch, right? In a chassis, your supervisor would be used to manage everything.  You don't have to log into any of those switches or do any troubleshooting on them or configure them, right? So configuration, management, and troubleshooting all happens from the controller. That's your one-stop, single pane of management. And their philosophy is of a pod, right? You build a pod of a certain scale, 48K endpoints, 16 racks, about 700 servers, you know, decent scale of that pod. And if you want to scale beyond that, you build another pod, right? And all these pods kind of connect up to a super spine kind of your core network, right? And if you see a lot of the big guys, Facebook, Microsoft, the world, that's what they're doing. They're building pods of networks which connect into a bigger core network, right? So that's the approach they're taking. And the key things they bring in with respect to OpenStack is they have a Neutron ML2 plugin. So they interact with the OpenStack environment, get the data out of it, and help in plumbing the physical network. And they have made some contributions on the horizon GUI side, which I'll talk about in deep. The other partner I want to talk about is Cumulus. Cumulus Networks has a very simple message again. OpenStack is heavily relying on Linux, right? And if you have a Linux environment, if your sysadmins and all the resources that you have for your OpenStack are familiar with Linux, using a lot of Linux tools, their simple message is extend it to the switch. Because still now, you would always say, hey, I have to do something special for this switch. So they're just saying, use the same provisioning tools, management tools, troubleshooting tools that you use with rest of the Linux devices and extend it with the switch as well. Because they are a pure Linux OS and they work with all the Linux tools that you already use. They also integrate with a number of different overlay partners as well. One of them being Dell's partner as well is Midokura, which I'll talk about, right? Other than that, they also leverage with other overlay partners like PlumGrid and Nuage and other such overlay solutions. And as I mentioned, Midokura and VMware are also partners that both of them, both of our partners integrate with, from an overlay standpoint. So going into the actual solutions, right? What are the different solutions? And a disclaimer right here is, these are not all the possible solutions. I'm just gonna talk about some of the approaches to give you a hint of what you can do with it to start off with or a more complex solution.  So there is no end to this once you get into open networking so the number of solutions you can approach using these different OS partners, right? So the most basic one, if you are using Cumulus, is you know, if you're just doing a POC, you just wanna try out OpenStack, is to build a simple no one-net network, right? And you just provision your Cumulus-based fabric network using Puppet or some other automation tool that you use in your environment. They have MLAC technology, they have some cool layer to active-active technology to build a very simple network using provisioning tools that you already have. And then you build a simple no one-net network with all the VLANs in all the ports, right? So just gets you going, you're able to kind of leverage what you have in the environment and you don't have to worry too much about the physical network itself. Again, I think this is more to get you started. I think as OpenStack migrates into Kilo, you'll see this moving, no one is kind of getting deprecated, so you'll move into a neutron ML to plug in with OVS and if you just want to keep it simple, right? So that's one approach to it. This one, they have a validated design guide as well. And if you come out our booth or their booth, you can actually see the step-by-step version of how they actually set it up, all from provisioning and managing the whole fabric. So this is one simple approach to just try and test it out, I think, and build a small environment if needed, right? So that's one approach to this. There is no overlay, there's no complication here, keeping it simple. Now if you want to go to a more production grade solution, there needs to be scale.  One of them is with Medokura and Cumulus. They have some integration with Medokura, where the Medokura management console can provision the VTAP gateway on the switches. So you don't have to do that separately. And you can build a layer three fabric, right? So if you want to build a scalable fabric, layer three is the way to go. And so you can build a layer three fabric with an overlay solution, kind of build a more scalable network. Now the next question is, oh, IP addressing, right? I'm always scared of doing IP addressing in a layer three environment. So they have some cool features like IPN numbered. IPN numbered is a feature that's been there forever with Cisco, but it's kind of been more adapted now. So you kind of reduce the number of IP addresses using features like that. So they kind of help you set up the fabric quickly using their provisioning tools, and then use the Medokura solution to get a very rich solution, right? It's a distributed routing, distributed firewall, load balancer, SNAT, DNAT, all of that cool stuff comes in. If that's the solution that you're looking for, you can try that option out as well with the Dell Open Networking Switches. Moving on to Big Switch, right? Again, Big Switch offers both no one at, and now moving into the Neutron, they have a Neutron ML2 plugin, right? And the main thing that I want to stress over here is ease of operations, right? Easy to provision, easy to manage, easy to kind of troubleshoot, right? That's their message with respect to OpenStack. With the Neutron ML2 plugin, now when you first set it up in an OpenStack environment, and I think they are collaborating with a bunch of certified OpenStack distributions like I think Mirantis Fuel and RDO and some of the other ones, they have a script which runs in the beginning, and it sets up the whole environment from an OpenStack perspective. They set up the plugin, they set up LLDP on the compute nodes, auto LLDP, and a couple of other things, right? So what happens is when the fabric comes up, the auto bonding happens from the leaf switches down to the compute nodes, that part is up, and then the Neutron ML2 plugin, once you start creating projects and networks in your OpenStack environment, the Neutron ML2 plugin conveys all those messages to the Big Switch controllers. So they have all that message, right? They know how many projects are there, how many networks are there, how many tenants are there, all of that information is there, and they're on the back end, they're plumbing the network to make sure all of that connects to each other, right? So they use simple things like VLANs and VRFs within the confines of the Broadcom chipsets to give you that scale, right? So there's like 4K VLANs, I think about 1K VRFs to, and that's the scale that you achieve, right? So there's no overlay involved here. We're using regular switching and routing. You're able to get a certain scale with it, right? And it's plugin play, right? You set it up, the controller talks to the OpenStack side, and sets it all up. So that's the key message here, right? If you don't want to deal with the physical fabric configuration provisioning, and this is a one-stop shop to do it. The other two aspects of it, which I wanna talk about is they've contributed to the Horizon GUI, extensions to the Horizon GUI. One is their heat, version of the heat template. So in an OpenStack environment, you know, there's a network admin, and you know, he has to talk to the tenants, he has to talk to security guys, he has to talk to a bunch of guys to create the networks that are needed for an overall OpenStack solution, right? So what he can do is leverage, if they're using big switch, he can leverage all this information, you know, create a template, and add it to the catalog of heat templates that are being built by other people. So at the end of the day, there's one place which is the source of truth, right? And people don't have to like, again, what did he say and what did he say? It's all documented in one place, and when the time comes, it's easy to deploy. So that's one aspect of the heat template, right? It saves time for everybody, and you kind of collect information in one place, and that's the network that you're going to build in OpenStack. And the other part of it is a BCF test path, right? So once this environment is up and running, on the horizon GUI, the OpenStack admin or the tenant admin, you know, he's able to see, without reaching out to the network admin, he can say, hey, okay, this VM is not able to talk to the other end. Should I call the network admin right away? No, you can go and kind of do the testing, first level of testing, using this test path, and do the end-to-end testing of that path and give you the result. So at least he can give some useful information to the network admin if this, the initial level doesn't give you the result that you need. The other part of it is the VMware and SX integration. If any of you want to go down that path with the VIO solution and things like that, I think all the OS partners that I've talked about have some level of VMware integration with NSX. And so that's another aspect to keep in mind when you go down the Open Networking path. So in summary, I just want to kind of highlight what Open Networking brings to the table, right? So all this is, whatever I talked about is happening on Dell Open Networking switches, right? You can try all of this on the same set of switches without having to go to a different set of switches, and you can decide based on that what works best for your environment. And I think each of them has their own strengths. So based on the choice of OS, the customer can decide what works best for him and decide what's the best way to kind of do the physical networking of OpenStack in a seamless way, and then they can focus on the OpenStack solution. And I know OpenStack Networking has started, delving into it, it's not easy. It's pretty complicated. So you want to spend more time on that and you want to make sure the physical fabric just works, the plumbing just works, right? That's the whole idea that I'm trying to bring, that Open Networking brings to the table. And I think at the end of the day, what all of this does is Dell Open Networking is enabling the word I can't say. So SDF, right? So that's what it's doing at the end of the day. I think you're getting all the options. At the end of the day, SDN is about being able to try out different options, change things, play around, and figure out what's best for you. And I think we are enabling that by providing all these options. So that's the summary of my presentation. Sorry for the dry mouth, but hopefully gave you some cool information. There is a Dell, at the Dell booth, we have two stations with the cumulus and big switch, demos running and remote labs if you want to access them. And you can also go to the individual places, individual booths of both big switch and cumulus if you want more information. They're definitely the experts at this. And questions. Oh, you can use the mic so it's recorded. Sorry. So one of the pain points we have currently in our VMware infrastructure that we anticipate we'll have in the open stack as well is, we try to do open trunks or just basically get as many VLANs down to our compute nodes as we can so that we don't have to focus on every time a new VLAN's added, getting it added to each of our nodes and that sort of thing. So one area we're looking specifically at Dell Open Networking and the cumulus piece is handling the plumbing like you're talking about. So I was curious if you could go into a little bit more detail about what's supported, like what we could actually drive from say NSX and have it end up in the physical plumbing. So from the NSX standpoint, I think with the VIO integrated solution, I think they also have a plugin into Neutron. So from that aspect, they should be able to, when you create a network, they should be getting that information and what VLAN it is. And they should be able to plumb that into the physical network using that as far as I know. Other than that, I'm not sure if NSX, so it will be the center of configuration would be NSX. If you're using NSX, the manager from NSX would be what would be doing that. So I believe they have a plugin. So what the plugin does is it just listens to everything Neutron does. So once you create the network, it should have that information to be able to create the VLANs that you need on the physical infrastructure side if you're going in that direction, I feel. Because on the VXLAN side, you don't really have to do anything on the physical network because that's the whole point of VXLAN is gonna is gonna plumb across all of that, right? That's happening from the VM level. And if there is what it does do is if it's crossing over to like physical networks, like non-virtual networks or non-virtual workloads, then the VTAP it configures the VTAP gateway on the physical switch so that it can de-capsulate the VXLAN encapsulation, right? So that's what it does. But I think from a VLAN standpoint, as long as it's able to get the information that's being done by Neutron, it should be able to plumb the network unless it's already done so. Thank you for presentation, it was very enjoyable. If you go on Dell's website and you're looking at the Dell switching options that S55 and the 4810, there's the Force 10 or OS9 version and then there's also the ON version. I think it actually shows up as a different part number. Is it possible, say a customer says, I'm not sure if I wanna do open networking at this very moment, can they buy the non-open networking switch and then do a, you know, only installation of, say, big switch or cumulus after the fact, or vice versa? Yeah, so that's a good question. So starting 2015, so in last year when we first started out, yes, there were different versions. We didn't know how far we were going with this and things like that, but starting now, all the new switches that we have introduced. So the S4048 ON, which is the 10 gig Trident 2 base switch, the S3048 ON, which is the one gig switch. So all the new top-of-rack 1RU switches that we are coming out with are all only ON-based. What that means is they are all only-bootable. They will all support our OS, which is OS9, as well as all these other options.  So you can do that, but all the switches are ON, so there is no differentiation there. And the same switches, yes, if you want FDOS, if you start with OS9, you can start with that, and then if you want to move to cumulus, sure, go to pay the licensing for that. But if you go down one of the partner's roads, and this is something not against our partners, but to encourage people to use our partners, is if you go down the road, what we say is, and many of the customers and successful customers, they were always not sure, because it's a new thing that people want to do. So they said, hey, what happens if this doesn't work out? Not because the partner is bad, because it's not the best thing for their environment. What happens then? What do I do? So you can fall back to OS9. That's what we say.  You can fall back to OS9 if it doesn't work out for whatever reasons. So that's what we say. But all new switches, top of rack, not the chassis or the bigger ones, but all new top of rack, single chip switches from the data center side, not the campus side, from the data center side, are all going to be ON switches, supporting one or more of the partners on it. Thank you. No more questions? That's the end of the presentation. Hope you liked it. Thank you.


the rest. But I remember then going to meet the oncologist and staffed my husband and, you know, he was saying, like, you know, right, you know, it's, you know, it's a good chance of reoccurrence and all the rest. So I took it out and take it bloodstone and he goes, like, it'll be a regular route that could be taken down to the bloodstream. How does that make you feel? But I remember walking down when all, and I was like, I still have good cancer. Mm-hmm. It was the first time because of oncology. The penny dropped. Yeah. But I acknowledged that, yes, I have cancer and that I'm at the start of a journey. And the rest of the family, as well, of course. Yeah. And how do you, have you sort of worked out dealing with the possibility of it coming back? In this day and age now, I don't think, like, we all want reassuring words from our doctors and consultants and all that kind of stuff, but I think because of, you know, liability and litigiousness and what have you, you know, they have to be really quite frank with us, you know. Well, to be honest with you, Greg, I would prefer to deal with the truth than to deal with the flecky kind of... We can manage truth, can't we? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, we're really good with that. I think as humans, most of us are. Yeah. Realistically, we've been willing to...  Yeah, good. There was one day I was up in, I can't even remember what it was, I was up in A&E, waiting all day long, and there was all these people in, and I thought, I think it was after my second infusion. And like, I had all these scary stories, like, you know, you need to protect yourself from infection because it could turn into septicinal.  I remember coming home and I'm down to the bedroom and I just burst into tears. And I think it was a relief. It felt vulnerable in that moment, didn't you? Absolutely. It felt vulnerable, yeah. So I think that's another, like, obviously my first journey in cancer here, like, you know, I think for a cancer patient, especially at the early stages of chemo, like, after listening, like, you know, protect yourself from all infections and, like, wrap yourself up and all that.  You went in there for blood, so why do you have to sit in A&E? No, I was so terrified. It was scary. Are you the type that put a name on your stomach? Your... It's my bellybutt.           It's quite interesting, actually. And it's funny how we work as humans, Trudy, in that you're actually you're considering holding onto it for a further six months to get back into life and then sort of... Cause, I mean, I can understand that. I really... Cause, like, for the last... For the last year, because I was diagnosed on the 4th of April. That's when I had the colonoscopy, so it was 4th of April, last year. When I've got my basically every two weeks. Yeah. Because like Kimmel's every two weeks. Fortnight cycle of time. Every two weeks. So you sort of miss a week out of your... Yeah for sure. Of course. And a lot of people have to get stomas and for permanence forever and and people react differently. I don't want to sort of you know judge people of all the same but the you know for some people when they're told they think oh that's the end of it then so I can't do this and I can't do that and I can't travel and I can't swim and I can't you know not always the case though obviously you know. I think you need to sort of just like accept I've accepted the stoma as as part of me getting on with my life you know I can go swimming and stuff do you know what annoys me most actually Greg is my pick line. Your what? I have a pick line you know forget me Kimmel one. Oh right. So if I get up in the morning to go for a shower I have to wrap it in cling film and then put a sleeve over it half before I go into the shower. No I do. Skip the shower. I'd be half in my shower or something truly. You know the stoma bag it's not a problem. It's not a problem. It's interesting it's interesting that that's not the thing it's the... I can't wait to get rid of the pick line I don't know. Hi Greg my partner went into his GP four years ago and only three went back twice. It wouldn't have been picked up that he had cancer of the bowel at only 40 years of age. Dr Zee Shans was amazing. If he hadn't gone back to his GP he wouldn't be here. It's not remarkable. Can I just agree with that caller there Dr Zee Shans is absolutely amazing. Now a lot of people were saying to me go to Galway. Galway is the centre of excellence go to Galway and I thought why would I go to Galway? Well like if everybody goes to Galway we'll lose whatever we have in Latter County and I have absolutely no regrets going to Latter County. I know Latter County hospitals sometimes get very bad press. I've absolutely not a negative to say by Latter County they have been absolutely amazing. The thing more is me Trudy too though is you know with with misdiagnosis or missed diagnoses we don't know how that's affecting families here so we've got you right sitting in front of us thank God Trudy but it was thanks to your little voice that you continue to listen to right and then we've got Robert's partner there who went back again to the GP like that's two people that that went back because they didn't like what they heard the first time I don't think I would. I think I I think I'd walk out of the GPs with a skip in my step because I heard what I wanted to hear yeah do you know what I mean well I walked out I walked out mad because it cost me 45 That's just because you're tight Trudy. That's just that going on towards the holiday. Exactly. I just want to say fair play to Trudy on talking about colon cancer making awareness for everyone else she sounds such a brave woman but I asked you about the braveness so we won't talk about that again. CRC Awareness is April you've got your diagnosis in April your official diagnosis though you I think you'd self diagnosis yourself that's a colorectal cancer awareness month so we're a little early but that's okay too there's a 5k coming up a walk stroke run yeah talk to me about that well I decided you know I I knew nothing about colorectal cancer before I got my diagnosis absolutely nothing never heard of it and I thought if I can help one person get diagnosed early then my journey will be worthwhile so I decided right I'll get blue balloons and we'll do a 5k walk ensure any shown hospice is just like baby steps I thought I'll raise a wee bit of money for them too so on the 6th of April I'm gonna have an awareness campaign down in the community central green castle just to get people to talk about their poo basically yeah do you know your philosophy is the same as mine when we talk about stuff on on this programme all that the only thing well firstly awareness is good anyway right but if one person identifies or connects with that and goes to the GP or gets something checked out or goes for a diagnosis then that's I consider my work done here so if we between ourselves truly uh there could be someone who's come out of the GP's feeling like you did and hasn't gone back yet you know if we even if they go back in and and they go down the colonoscopy route it's all fine that's grand yeah absolutely you've nothing to lose it just means that one person gets that diagnosis before things start getting you know worse than than mean you were doing a job so 5k walk run Saturday 6th of April refreshments served afterwards in the centre it's the green castle centre yeah okay and uh you want as many people as possible to come along and get involved why not my dogs are free you can take your dog with you as well um Elaine Doherty says can you please wish truly good luck thanks I'm not sure if you know Elaine or not but she wanted to pass on to you anything else you want to talk about Trudy I'll mention whilst we're here just I'd like to sort of thank my family for the support this is the tough bit maybe you know yeah keep seeing me close up here that's okay take your time Trudy the husband's been amazing like I get breakfast and bed every morning I don't know how I'm gonna get up and go back to work and stuff like that now reality hits on and my daughter do you know that it's the small things because every Tuesday when I've gone up for my chemo and stuff like that I've come home and she said fresh sheets and David covers the bed which I absolutely love then getting into bed so it's we small things it makes huge difference yeah yeah that's a nice welcome home yeah absolutely and then there's other wee things that can niggle you as well because the different chemo's affect you in different ways I think the chemo for breast cancer you lose your hair and it's a huge thing for people who lose their hair but the chemo that I've been getting I've full head of hair and it purposes to me like cut your rucksack told you you've got your hair and I was like yeah but I'm pooing into your bag God gives me one hand with the other is that what you're saying okay Trudy's such a courageous and uplifting lady friend and colleague whose glasses always half full and inspiration for us all so I presume that's your work colleagues well I'm hoping from the glass to be full very shortly I'm still recovering from St. Patrick's and I'm only joking I was a good boy right so Noel's your hubby isn't he yes Noel okay well done to you Noel and your family as well and your friends and stuff absolutely and I think even too Trudy today even even if it's not if it doesn't if people don't need to go to the doctor or anything like that there I think even just in the way you've spoken about it you've you'll have lifted people's spirits and all that kind of stuff do you know do you know what talk about your poo how does it don't be embarrassed to talk about your poo yeah of course poo is good to check on and stuff how does it feel about being uh do you you know how you said you you have had no sort of exposure to cancer or such thank god with family and all how does it feel to sort of be a cancer survivor is that something that you're comfortable with uh or how do you frame it in your life in your mind I'm literally ticking one scan at home Greg and that but I'm on about sort of the label of it if you know what I mean because it wasn't there before and now this is you now and you've got your bum bag and was it your bum bag or your belly belly belly but your belly but no I'm sorry I don't want to say that I'm a cancer survivor I've had cancer yeah exactly so far it's behind me yeah the next scan might be different and I'll deal with it then excellent no so it's subjective and I think I just it I kind of got a sense of that from you right and I thought it'd be interesting to ask because everyone deals with it differently and you go all right you know I've beaten it this time and now me again yeah I want to get back to work I want to get back to my life and all right well Trudy listen the best of luck with the last couple of treatments great news on the the most recent scan long may those continue and back to work and what have you really really soon I hope it's been absolutely lovely talking about you it's been lovely talking about your poo right let's talk let's talk about poo we have to talk about number two's all right okay listen thanks so much Trudy for everything thanks for getting in touch with us and please go out on Saturday the 6th of April to the Green Castle community centre there's going to be refreshment served afterwards in the centre it's a 5k walk run bit of information and what have you and it's happening in April which is colorectal cancer awareness month Trudy thank you so very much for your time and it's been lovely having you in studio and delighted you're doing so well thanks for having me that's Trudy Doherty from Mulville the county's number one talk show the 9 till noon show on Highland radio hop to it with Easter savings at Tesco with our board be approved finest Irish Angus fillet barrel now half price cross our finest hot cross bonds off your shopping list for two euro 50 now two euro and crack open large Easter eggs like Cadbury twirl was five euro now three euro enjoy a bigger and better Easter save time shop online or click and collect Tesco every little helps club current required subject to availability available in most stores prices varying express stores see tesco.ie the effects of personal debt problems often go beyond just financial what we don't want to face can cause us to unravel stress eats at you relationships unwind it can feel like life's falling apart but support is available get back on track with the insolvency service of Ireland an independent organization that helps untangle personal debt problems see back on track.ie supported by the government of Ireland 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with just one evening per week on campus open up your future by contacting the faculty office on nine one eight six two zero six or visit atu.ie today right now the business matters podcast from highland radio is available for you right now to stream on our website and listen listen at your leisure or your leisure sorry its presenter is chris ashmore and he's in studio with me this morning good morning chris good morning greg right okay so are we gonna start with some news here yes company yeah there's a company called european green transition now its chairman is a dunigal entrepreneur cattle freel and they're planning to float on the london stock exchange the company it basically focuses on assets and businesses that are connected with the whole move towards green energy and its portfolio includes a number of exploration projects two of them are in sweden one's in germany and it's all about looking for things like lithium which we many of us may know is used for electric vehicles so there's big demand for that and there's also metals called dysprosium and terbium not i'm not familiar with them which i'm told are used in the manufacture of wind turbines now in europe there's a big push on to source these materials for the green energy sector and to lessen the reliance on supplies from china so an area of growth and shares in this company are set to trade after easter so one of the options for lithium is scraping the seabed the european seabeds which obviously could be problematic i'm not saying that that's what this company is involved in but that's one of the alternative sources of lithium because obviously the way it's mined at the moment is a little controversial right okay we were talking earlier on about these new posters that don't go petrol stations and others might have to put up but an angle on this is the the compulsion to do so yeah now it's going to be interesting to see how it pans out fergus scharkey the head of business supports and transport with the sustainable energy at ardy varland he's saying that you know there will be compliance checks representatives of the petrol station saying look there needs to be a bedding in process for the consultation but the bottom line is in the near future you will be driving into your petrol four court now it applies to his four courts with more than three pumps and you will see a screen and it'll say 100 kilometers of petrol will cost you x and diesel and green you know what it's not a bad idea gives you an idea of the cost how you aggregate it there will be interesting look it's like these yeah it'll what want to watch want to watch um scala yeah scala and this used to be known as scale x local enterprise office it's basically a a program run over 11 weeks targeted at startup entrepreneurs who are in a good place to go for global growth might have a great idea in dunigol but has a potential elsewhere so you go through the local enterprise office deadline for application is April the fourth and there's all sorts of advice and mentoring there and worth looking at if you have a big ambitions yeah a lot of effort is required and some would say he's happening to try and get you know more property back into use be it commercial or derelict and there's a new funding stream for the council that's going to work in that direction yeah we've heard quite a lot about this basically four million euros being provided to dunigol county council under what they call the urban regeneration and development fund they have identified some 44 vacant or derelict properties in the the center of letter kenny there's a number of grants available to support people and the whole idea is to get these vacant properties back into part of the housing stock or indeed maybe to purchase some of them and then sell them on but it'll be certainly a better scenarios and having a lot of vacant run down properties no problem now you keep an eye on wind what does yeah what happened in february well february we keep an eye on this yeah the wind energy report wind energy provided 41 percent of ireland's electricity in february and if you take the first two months this year it was 38 percent of the country's power so those figures gradually going up as as time goes on it's a great it's a great high figure is that electricity generated because we've heard that a lot of it can be lost on the network i wonder is it electricity used or electricity generated it says energy provided so i must must check that out and actually on a not unrelated matter and on the farming program last week we were talking with about the subject of using these big batteries to store electricity and there's a number of companies already in negotiations with farmers about leasing land and that's something that we're going to see more of because as you say it's stored we can use it yeah i mean the wind can be blowing all night and i know we're going to look at other things but the wind can be blowing all night but people aren't using electricity so it's a waste it's about what's being what's being how it's being used rather than generated okay uh i love myself a traditional full Irish breakfast i'm actually really quite boring because i don't eat out terribly often right but even if i go for lunch if it's an all-day breakfast you can't be someone else cooking you a fry it's it's hard to beat i knew you'd like this one yeah you have that sort of all-day breakfast look about you yeah you're on about my physique no no just those just i can i can imagine you tucking into the fry anyway the reason we're talking about his weight shaming me the central statistics office does many things one of them is uh it provides these quirky little stats now and again and they've just come out about the cost of the traditional full Irish uh so they actually look at the cost of bread and butter which have fallen slightly in price compared to this time last year but eggs tomatoes pork sausages the best back rashes as well as mushrooms are up in price milk is very expensive yeah they've gone up a good bit but you can keep the mushrooms milk has dropped a little bit tea's gone up a bit overall the ingredients for your much-loved fry Greg are 2.3% dear now than they were last year what is your price limit for a fry up now that's a very good question because they do vary i won't and this i i this is i'm going to come across as really tight here i would be uncomfortable going over 10 10 year old to me 10 or less is the now ceiling yeah i think 10 12 which is quite common out but doesn't include the coffee some places do and that makes a big difference anywhere i go includes it yeah and that makes some lovely breakfast but normally it's under right there's a price point uh i was in a hotel in belfast and it was 18 sterling for breakfast and i was there not included in my overnight stay and i thought 18 sterling i could just couldn't get around the corner it would need to be very good maybe it maybe as much as you can eat nice top-end breakfast i don't think you know i think the quality they need to serve with breakfast here sausages you know the white pudding and the bacon i don't know you can go any more top-end than that do you know what i mean like um but funny enough uh i would be a place i used to go uh but they changed their bacon and that was enough for me to go somewhere else yeah no it wasn't price wise it was just actually the type of the and and the black and white pudding i mean the difference between the cheapest the cheap and the really good stuff i've noticed too that uh obviously people update their menus but a lot of menus i've seen have the black pudding scribbled out because not a lot of people eat it now i think that's a crime against food not to eat black pudding it's delicious in fact i would say it's nicer than white pudding but i've noticed a lot of uh the restaurants had black pudding scribbled out there could be a survey in the making and yet they keep the tomato there and i have never eaten the tomato i always say right i'm gonna try it last do you know the half of tomato never got round um yet i eat tomatoes okay but not like that uh right okay so the cost of at least the the source cost the materials cost of an irish breakfast uh up to a three percent what is the upper limit that you'll pay for breakfast to me it's a tenner uh but if it's really nice you know i'll go 12 maybe but you know as i say i don't get to do it very often treat yourself right okay so i'm just thinking about food now new development at the letter candy community centers this our last piece of news yeah yeah and big development work on a major 1.4 million pound new building set to begin uh next week at letter candy community center uh in fact it's next wednesday the the sod first sod will be turned by the mayor uh kevin bradley and it's a new community building state of the art dressing rooms and it's basically to cope with the demand if anybody who knows it passing by there's a lot of people there all the time and they they've run out of uh dressing rooms i can't handle the number of people going through so it's a it's a big development for them so i've been speaking with philip o kennedy the chair of the management and also to leah mow donnell manager at the center who has been giving details about the project and just why it's needed yeah well suppose the letter candy community center is a multi-purpose facility we cater for all sports and probably we are a victim of our own success we have to try and facilitate all the different groups that are using the center on a on a day a weekly monthly yearly basis but we're going to build here adjacent from the astro pitch here is a community room and two dressing rooms the reason for it is it's the lack of changing facilities within the center especially when we built the astroturf facility here we have only two small dressing rooms in a small room and as time is going on we just saw that there was a need for extra space for teams that are traveling from all over the country now here to give them the area that's needed philip o kennedy there um no sorry that's leahm sorry that's leahm oh donnell and you also talked to philip o kennedy okay sorry about that chris my word you'd swear i'd uh said something terrible i haven't ever seen you move so so uh with such vigor and uh full of energy after me morning fray come here we were listening intently to leahm there now of course you know chris has already listened to leahm but chris actually can tell me where his favorite breakfast ever was you know you like donnell you hold on to the information yeah it was not only in a you know the hotel but also where it was your best breakfast in the world ever was in well actually since i told you another one was coming to mind but number two was the it was formerly the uh raddison in the cavern which has since been renamed i'm not sure what they call it now uh but it was basically a massive buffet and you know any of that smoked salmon oh yeah yogurt and i just went to town went to town on it um which is number one then number one uh was the ritz carlton in parscourt in county wicklow uh greg he's just what a memory okay brilliant stuff incredible okay brilliant chris now uh that podcast is available for you right now to stream uh all download from our website spotify our itunes i believe it's there too i've never actually checked but i imagine it is because i'm told to say every single week and if people want to listen to on the radio chris yes uh after the six o'clock news on sunday and if you want to contact me about the show it's business matters at highlandradio.com i must dash because the all-day breakfast finishes at 12 the all-day breakfast finishes 12 it's a bit Irish isn't it it's a full irish back after these watch the show live now on youtube facebook and at highlandradio.com Deardre's at the diamond carrandona are having a one day only mega stock clearance sale in a greening hotel bird on sunday 24th of march starting at 10 a.m come and grab some amazing bargains many brands flash to clear do not miss this great sale discover comfort with eye heating and cooling your trusted heat pump engineers and mitzvah be she approved service providers in dunny gall we design install and maintain cutting-edge heating systems build a lasting relationship with us through annual service and comprehensive after sales support contact us for a free consultation on low-cost low carbon heating solutions visit eye heating and cooling dot ii today mns has a hot cross bun for everyone this Easter for the traditionalists they have luxury fruited hot cross buns for the chocoholics there's the extremely chocolatey hot cross buns for the cheeseheads extremely cheesy hot cross buns and for those who need no invitation to indulge the new extremely caramely hot cross buns and they're all two for four euro 50 and for those who don't like hot cross buns uh try a crumpet or something these are not just hot cross buns these are m and s hot cross buns selected stores subject to availability teas and seas apply join the team at homeland letter kenny this weekend friday 22nd and saturday 23rd of march for our big paint event with exclusive offers running all weekend chat with our experience paint center team and special guests meet and greet with the joel ox dog from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. on saturday 23rd for more information visit homeland dot ii at michael murphy sports and leisure we know a good pair of trainers makes all the difference whether you're running marathons or training for your first 5k we stock all the leading brands including asex brooks and new balance with different styles and features to suit individual running needs call in store or shop online at michael murphy sports dot ii for new perspectives and a fresh vision join me greg hughes on the nine till noon show every thursday at 10 15 for your voice your community okay you're very welcome back to the nine till noon show uh just interesting something popping up on social media uh from uh kevin dole who is the group head of news uh executive editor with the irish independent uh he has posted uh told this closely guarded secret will be significant people being uh contacted six six a.m. to coordinate but for now it's all being kept within government buildings a political earthquake major announcement expected from the irish government at noon uh so obviously something to that because uh you wouldn't go public with that uh unless there was something there we'll keep an eye on that about 15 minutes away having a clue what it's about if i'm honest with you right we crossed to the united states of america and mary zeigler is there i hope i pronounce your surname correctly mary you did thank you lovely to have you with us so you are uh born and raised in allenstown pennsylvania you're living just outside washington dc but you have strong connections to donagall and you want to pursue uh pursue those further i do i have a grandmother uh who was born in donagall near the little village of duery um my grandfather's people also came from donagall near the lock salt area of dunlow um so i have been i think as i've gotten older i've gotten more and more curious about their background of course i grew up with my irish born grandmother she left dunagall when she was a young child um so now i will be visiting dunagall in the fall in september and i've decided to start putting together the pieces that i can so your mother's uh sorry your grandmother's name uh this is the lady that was born near dukery uh in 1889 her name was anna cannon and she was the daughter of frances cannon and mary or donald cannon um and you believe a lot of their immediate family emigrated uh to pennsylvania uh do you believe any remained none i don't believe any of the immediate family that stayed i believe that my grandmother her parents and her siblings all emigrated i do understand that my great grandfather was one of 12 sons so i wouldn't be surprised if there are some distant cousins right okay and this is intriguing you don't have an awful lot of detail uh and i think understandably you don't expect anyone to remember the family because so much time has passed but listen let's not rule anything out okay uh but you have a hand drawn map that gives an approximate location of the family home what a what a wonderful thing to look forward to it's like something out of an adventure isn't it uh but was this map handed down how did you acquire it this is a map that was drawn by my uncle father robert brown uh one of my my grandmother's youngest son uh he visited ireland several times visited dunagall visited the duery here can i just uh pause you just for one moment because it's quite significant news here from ireland our t-shock uh leo virad car is to stand down as t-shock and finagall leader uh this is just for the listeners um so we'll have more details on that in a moment but leo virad car is standing down as t-shock and uh finagall leader now i'm not sure what has triggered that uh but stay with us we'll keep you updated on that um mr virad car will stay on as t-shock pendant the election of a loon leader of finagall attention will now turn to his replacement with a contest expected among several ministers of course pascal donna who's simon harris simon coveney heather humpfries are among the names uh speculated upon the race but what we know at this time is he is to announce at noon from government buildings that he's stepping down as t-shock so we might actually roll the show over we'll see what's what's going on there in the meantime uh mary i'm very sorry to trouble you but uh it's a really quite significant bit of breaking news there that's big news he was just he just here a few days ago what did you do to him in washington dc anyway we'll get more to that in a moment sorry i got distracted because of the significance of that news um your the hand drawn map how did you acquire that sorry that was a map that was drawn by my uncle father robert brown the youngest son of that irish born grandmother uh he visited ireland and dunagall many times and so he put together this little roughly drawn map for the rest of us so that if we visited we could find the family homestead and of course also you'd like to visit the church uh your uncle father robert brown sadly passed away said mass there when he visited uh there's an altar bell in grade with his name or with the name of your great uncle patrick canon he donated it to the church in dookery uh so if anyone's in the area that would like to sort of meet with you chat you talk about the history tease some of this out uh is that kind of what you're interested in mary yes i would love it as you said i certainly don't expect anyone to remember the family but i would love to know more to understand more of the history of that area during those years lovely stuff it's been lovely speaking to you we have contact details anything you wish to add mary no i know you have big news to take care of today so thank you for taking the time with me no problem we really do appreciate that time and just to recap on that breaking news and i'm not really quite sure as to the reason why but we can tell you that t-shock leo of radcar is to stand down as t-shock and finnegale leader he's due to make the announcement in a planned photo call at noon in the courtyard of government buildings the wider public force became aware of the pending announcement after reports of frantic meetings in government buildings this morning the cabinet met this morning for the first time since the defeat of the referendum ministers were also away in st patrick's day duties last week ministers were alerted to expect the announcement following a cabinet meeting so that's a developing story there as a say i'm just thinking on my feet here hopefully if that were to start directly at 12 noon we might try and bring you the audio of that so don't tune away we don't know exactly why he has decided to make this decision at this point but as i say stay with us and we will bring you that information if we can 08 660 25 000 is the 08 660 25 000 is the whatsapp and text number or you can give us a call on 07 4 9 1 25 000 so what kind of questions might be asked with leo of radcar due to make this announcement it's at midday as i say during a press conference will this trigger a general election well the sense is that it will not trigger an election so they might actually just sit tight and see what comes from there apparently there'd been extensive speculation or intense speculation about leo of radcar's future as t-shock i wasn't really ill-fated with that because you know i know there are people that are maybe dissatisfied with with some of the work he's doing or what have you but i wasn't aware that there was a big push on for him to be replaced it's really quite significant news is it off the back of the referendum defeat is there something else going on i simply don't know and there's no point speculating but we will try and get someone to comment on that and also hopefully if that starts at 12 i would like to bring you if possible i'd like to be able to bring you that announcement from the t-shock it doesn't happen in this country very very often that we will see someone the leader of the country stepping down but as you say we heard from mary he was just over in the united states a lot of ministers were away i'm not sure if the pressure is coming from the ministers or within the party or within the coalition i don't know simply we don't know because we're only speculating stay with us we're going to take the 12 o'clock ad break the one we'd normally play as we head towards the news ad set 12 just to give us a little bit of space to see if we can get further reaction to this news which has literally just been sprung upon us refresh your shoe wardrobe with the latest 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insurance support it's what we do visit your local branch to talk to your fbd insurance team requires valid van theft claim excludes electronics and software teas and seas and normal underwriting criteria apply underwritten by fbd insurance plc fbd insurance group limited trading is fbd insurance is regulated by the central bank of ireland highland radio weather updates with ireland west airport time to book the family summer holiday fly to barcelona farrow melanne meorca and much more for a perfect family getaway ireland west airport don't just take off take it easy today largely dry with sonic spells developing later this morning although cloud will increase again this evening highest temperatures of 9 to 11 degrees okay so as we are learning uh t-shock leo farad car is to announce at 12 that he's stepping down as t-shock and finnegale leader the cabinet has met or been meeting in government buildings in advance of this announcement this morning there had been intense speculation about the t-shock's future john macketeer editor of the trochanal tribunes with us john um uh what do you think is triggered this good morning to you i think it's the the referendum results we've been writing about us we're writing about again this week i and many others read the referendum results as a massive vote of no confidence in the government and the matter of which way they seem to spin it that is more and more coming to be a reality plus the fact that barracuda has lost in a very important td's those seats will not all be held quite easily he has he has he has done a specific course he has he will be seen staging off on monday i was writing an editorial about the fallout from the from the referendum and we're just saying that leo radker will be seen as a loser he lost the double and paid by election he has he has lost quite 14 or 16 seats in the last year in the election and now he has lost two referendums so the knives i would imagine were out in the long grass of the finnegale grass which was been talked about but not seriously nobody would have expected this because we're so close to a series of elections the local and the european elections and obviously well that's precipitate a general election and who will take over in finnegale who will take over as leader well where does that go or do we go right into a general election i'm not too sure the news has come as quite a shock there's no point in saying otherwise because he's a very young man a pretty pretty experienced nowadays there's going to be a lot of a lot of speculation about who will replace him and about the exact reasons why he is going but obviously his time is up and that's that's about it it's just not the type of accountability that we're familiar with in irish politics and i don't mean that cynically at all it's just not something we see very often to the point whereby i'm actually a little bit shell shocked that it could be for those reasons but i suppose when we talk about who is to say what the td's who are choosing to no longer stand finnegale who's to say what they're saying as they're heading out the door is that has that increased pressure on him i think really greg the issue is they're all relatively young maybe there's one or two returning health grounds or age related but relatively speaking the the gendron griffons and garrick and his forties joe mcqueen and his eric swifties and don't at all those are two seats that they could last uh they could lose numbers of seats in dobblant uh leo ratka probably they've done internal polling as they continuously do but i'd imagine they've had a long hard look into the abyss of what the general election could be for them and it just does not look good okay donal calvinist with us as well stay where you are job market here donal calvin i like yourself been covering politics for a long time i listen i don't want to sound like conspiracy theories but it seems like is there anything else there because this type of accountability in irish politics just seem incredibly rare donal i i suspect greg and and like you i'm i'm i'm i'm not really shocked by this and i'm guessing too i i suspect leo ratka has been sat down by some colleagues and told here's the deal leo jump or get pushed um kiran canon announced that he is is is not running in gallway again as jormsey another young man we have this is 20 i think finnegale to lees now not running in the next election the referendum loss was huge i mean if ever there seemed to be an open goal in terms of getting a referendum victory this one would appear to have been it and uh they they managed to blow it and i think yeah it's uh accountability in the sense that leo ratka is is heading a government which has been seen to have had the biggest referendum defeat in the history of referenda on an issue that on the face of it should have been should have been a gimme and it's being seen as as leo ratka's failure and he you know has uh the user term birdie the teflon he shook back in the day and like birdie leo would have had that slight aura of um invincibility about him but just like birdie too that slight aura of invincibility has now been lost i suspect he's been sat down by colleagues and given the ultimatum jump or be pushed yeah it's just with with some of the investigations that have been ongoing and looking into sort of elements of his uh political career in dealings i obviously maybe it's nothing to do with that and is simply down to to uh what we're speculating on john can you stay with us for the announcement there's no bother no bother stay where you are don't stay there too we're going to take a quick break john will be uh with john bresnan just in a couple of moments we're going to see how uh timely this press conference is at noon with a high digital online skills course you'll feel a real difference i can listen to all the music i like the boss app that's coming out and it's brilliant anything you want and all it's at our 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long-term church dairy presents to internationally acclaimed acts the priests and soprano margherike's ensing columns all dairy on palm sunday 24th of march tickets just 25 pound sterling to book tickets call long tower pro kill house on 0287 126 2301 or check our facebook or website for online sales okay this is the 9th till noon shall we're running a little over 12 and we appreciate john brezning allowing us the time because we are waiting for t-shirt lee of rad car to step outside government buildings and to deliver the news that we know now that lee of rad car stepping down as t-shirt and finnegale leader john macketeer if it is because of the departure of finnegale td's or pressure from within finnegale or indeed the outcome of the referenda do you think he'll reference that in his speech in a way i'll do but i think this has come in such a shock who ever expected a headline news like like like that just days after he had gone from a very successful trip to the u.s. and they would seem to have been coasting along down to the local election day and on the 7th of june and the u elections but the referendums have have have floored finnegale they're not floored finnegale but they have floored a raptor in particular the finnegale grass roots couldn't give a hoot you know because i hold hold hold the view that people did not go out to vote for the referendums they went out to have a whack at the government to have a whack at the leader and i think there's a donal there says he was just sat down and said look you go or you're pushed and i mean i suppose in a way the same happened to end the kenny really you know and there's no easy way around politics you know he's there seven years the party hasn't improved in this time the last season 2016 from that high of 73 in 2011 uh 16 and then they've lost over 30 seats like in that time and we're actually new leadership just didn't work for them in 2020 even though you're there again i i take everything what you're saying on board but uh and i'll go to donal on this one i still can't believe that he wouldn't if it's for those reasons just ride it out uh you know it was a relatively poor showing in the last election he talked of being content to go into uh opposition and indeed he said it might be good for finnegale to have a period in opposition it's just again not the level of if i was not on there i would definitely be saying there has to be something else too this whether it's relieved revealed today or not but again you know maybe that's just my initial reaction to really quite a bit of a shocking announcement today i was listening to ivan yates's podcast the pats to power podcast that he does with um matt cooper and indeed ivan was on the program with you a couple of weeks back promoting that and it's a really interesting podcast and he did say on the last edition of it when they were discussing the the the followed from the referendum that ivan yates believes a former finnegale cabinet minister himself he believes finnegale could go to as low as 28 seats after after the next general election now when you as as john was saying when you look at how many seats finnegale there were in the 70s uh under end to kenny you know less than 15 years ago when you look at those figures i mean to go from that down to 28 is is a huge plummeting and i think again maybe who it is we we're not sure yet potentially simon harris i mean you know who's seen as the new the new generation of finnegale but if it's someone like simon harris has sat down and done the sums and said look whatever chance we have of implementing a change now and rebuilding before an election if we just let it slide and just sort of vaguely float into an election with the expectation of opposition that's going to show a party defeat and is that going to get is that going to go to support but how did they keep it a secret if that's the case i mean this is not a government renown for being watertight in terms of information you know there hasn't been a broad there hasn't been i don't think even i mean there's been some commentary but there hasn't been broad speculation about liov rag car's opinion uh you know of discontent within the coalition or sort of within uh you know within within the cabinet so it's just again the two things surprise me a accountability but b the fact that this information seemingly has been kept quiet but i think that's because it's internal within the party if it was within the coalition at the cabinet table that's differently the cabinet table is always going to leak a coalition is going to leak because you're going to have different political forces this doesn't seem to me i don't get the sense that this is coming from within the coalition i mean me me hall martin is probably sitting back licking his lips now thinking this is wonderful this potentially is playing right into me hall martin's hands i'm playing into fina false hands because finna guile this is someone within finna guile and this is my and i could be further out than fan of lighthouse here but my take is this is someone in finna guile says the only chance we have of any kind of a decent election showing whenever the next general election may be is that if we have a new leader in place now and we start three building and i am not questioning you and if that's coming from within finna guile they're they're going to keep that tight and again they've they've gone to leo and they've given leo an ultimatum and he's seen the way the wind is blowing i just i just uh i just don't see how he gets the hammering for that result when it was a government decision to hold a referendum because this effectively could be him saying right i've gone lads uh now it's time for you aim and ryan and you me hall martin to go as well uh that's what's making me wonder what the motivation behind this is is and what that pressure that puts on the remaining uh the the remaining leaders of the government you take that point john like why i can't imagine that i can't imagine that leo vratkar wants to be the full guy for this referendum and that for to be his uh that to be his uh you know his last political act why should he be the full guy well as donal was suggesting a little while back there they've got to find a fall guy somewhere it wasn't in finna fall aim and ryan probably not because he doesn't rate that highly in in the polls so leo vratkar was the obvious one uh it was a non-campaign uh nobody was out on the doorsteps there was a very little on television he had a long freeze never appeared once and i suppose it was just the biggest mess up in politics probably for 50 years that he led them into a referendum that that the thought that the one point they were thinking of winning at 75 25 percent against you know that evaporated and he had no response to it and i think that failure of the tisha and he's the leader of the country he had no response as as as as that campaign swung the probably totally must read it as well and he is tisha's probably most guilty of that right but like at the end of the that his time was up we're still waiting on him to come out i don't know really how much longer we can waste because we'll be covering extensively extensively in the one o'clock news but the the podium is that again donal i just don't like again what does this say to sort of you know ruddery called gorman who was effectively the person that led this out i mean if the leader of filigale is going kind of the green minister stay in situ if this is the reason that leo fred car stepping out of politics well i can't wait till here what he has to say because if it is over that and i'm sure it is right fair play for calling it but i i'm i'm a gut person and i just can't see that that's the reason but as i say i'm starting to sound like a wild conspiracy theory if this is it i mean it raises a couple of questions i mean does he stay on as caretaker of t-shirt or does he sit down does he step down now and just somebody takes over apparently he's taking he's staying on and staying on as a caretaker until another t-shirt now does that mean that means then presumably a new leader of finneguel is elected and then that new leader of finneguel is proposed as the new t-shirt in the doll because i mean the the other option would be perhaps the tarnish to taking over which i mean you know finneguel is not going to take that in the month of sundays um it's i i i don't know i'll be honest greg i'm i'm i'm just taking it back as as most people are as as as you are um i certainly wasn't expecting this to be what i'd be doing a quarter past 12 today um and you know it's it's really a matter of what leo says and i mean you know we're going to have to wait until he says what he says okay well listen he could he could this could be deferred to one o'clock so what we will do is that we waited just perhaps as long as we could don't are you doing headlines are you i can do headlines now yeah okay right okay listen the polity is again to uh to john breslin uh who we've delayed his program but the t-shirt was due to come out at one and it would have been uh 12 sorry and we could have brought that but uh it's just not happening um john macketeer listen thank you very much indeed for that i appreciate it thank you all right thank you yourself but before we go to those headlines uh kathryn noon is a former finneguel senator a regular contributor to this show as well uh kathryn you like uh we perhaps looking at a tv screen waiting for the t-shirt to explain why he's taken this decision how shocked are you i'm really scared to be honest um i thought the news flash up like it's definitely why do you think he's taken this decision can you hear me okay yeah it was breaking up a little there but i think it's cleared up why do you think he's taken this decision here and the coverage is never great but um yeah why don't you just touch me there did it am i surprised by it yeah i mean do you think this is because of the outcome of the referenda do you think this is because uh it was i'd say it's a combination of factors gregg i'd say you know speaking from personal experience politics has become a very toxic career to be honest and uh the referendum won't have helped the fact that there are 10 tvs outstanding in the next election who've decided just not to not to go forward i think it's a combination of all of that uh do you think he'll it'll be interesting to in his comments what you know how pointed he is as to the reasons behind his decision i'd say he will give the reasons he never holds back you know um i was just waiting to hear like everyone else is um there in in the sitting room just to see you know the rationale behind it but as you know from watching him on the media over the years he's likely to be quite clear and um straightforward in his comments about why he's not going forward i heard speculation there on rt1 that he might take commissionership you know there's a new commission that hadn't heard anything about that so really my guess is as good as yours as to why exactly you know if he's got a new role in europe which they're speculating about on rt or um if he's got another role lined up to go to he won't have any difficulty getting a job but um yeah it's a it's a shock yeah do you think he was pushed no i don't yeah okay i think i think he i think i don't think he has been i mean i was challenged a few colleagues recently you know finnegale hasn't been doing as well as they you know they might like to be in the polls but you know it's difficult for a party that's essentially been in government for three years with or without others so you know it's um it's that's likely to be a factor as well and how difficult the next election is going to be um for the government parties um as i said the lots of colleagues strong supporters deciding that they're not going to go for the next election and then i think probably the overarching feature of just politics is does it leave the government though it's a well-paid job but it's difficult yeah of course it is yeah we've talked about many times but does this just yeah say for instance this is about accountability and the referendum does this not then put pressure on you know the green party maybe even roderker gulman and finna fall who also you know are as responsible you could you could say is finna get it makes them kind of lame duck does it not if that is the reason for his announcement yeah potentially i mean i don't think it'll be a singular reason for us i think it might it'll have added to a lot of other things that have you know that are on the horizon or have happened that are adding to his reason for deciding that would be my god honest he's about to take to the podium so i'll let you away i'm sure you're as interested in this as well as i can chat to you again about all right thanks thanks kathryn okay we will stay with this because uh he's about to make uh his announcement everyone i'd like to uh thank you for coming i'd like to read a brief statement um i've had the privilege to serve for the past 20 years as a public representative 13 is a member of cabinet seven as leader of my party and most of those is t shook of this great country it has been the most fulfilling time of my life working with colleagues i've had the honor of helping to lead Ireland from unemployment to full employment from a budget deficit to budget surplus from austerity to prosperity through a pandemic in which we saved lives and livelihoods through brexit when we prevented a hard border between north and south and protected our place in europe i'm proud that we've made the country a more equal and more modern place when it comes to the rights of children the lgbt community equality for women and their bodily autonomy more recently we've read led the country through an inflation cost of living crisis the worst of which is now thankfully behind us we've made significant steps towards affordable child care and universal health care making access to both more affordable for more people we've made work pay better with the implementation of a national living wage statutory sick pay lower personal taxes improved family leave allowing parents to spend more time with their children in those crucial early years i'm happy that during my time is t shook we were able to honor my commitment to double spending on the arts culture and sport and this is making a real difference now and we'll continue to do so into the future fostering and assisting the artists and the sportsmen and women of the future we provided leadership by increasing our spending on international development and we've expanded our diplomatic footprint around the world building on Ireland's already considerable soft power the national broadband plan is underway bringing fibre-based internet connections to every home school business and farm and community in Ireland which the critics said shouldn't be done we've established the technology universities and the rural development fund and since 2011 we've quadrupled overall annual investment in public infrastructure that's meant considerably more investment in priorities like housing health care facilities school buildings and climate action and i am deeply proud that we as irish people welcomed over a hundred thousand ukrainian refugees to our shores when they needed our protection notwithstanding the challenges the springs in my time as t shook we reduce consistent poverty and income inequality housing construction is more than doubled with 500 people becoming homeowners each week for the first time the highest number in almost two decades of course there are areas in which we have been much less successful and someone which we have sadly gone backwards but i hope you'll forgive me if i leave it to others to point them out on a day like this they will receive plenty of airtime and column space when i became party leader and t shook back in june 2017 i knew that one part of leadership is knowing when the time has come to pass on the baton to somebody else and then having the courage to do it that time is now so i am resigning as president and leader finnegale effective today and will resign as t shook as soon as my successor is able to take up that office i've asked our party general secretary and executive council to provide for the new leader to be elected in advance of the aidesh on saturday april 16th thus allowing a new t shook to be elected when the doll resumes after the easter break i know this will come as a surprise to many people and a disappointment to some and i hope at least you will understand my decision i know that others will how shall i put it cope with the news just fine that is the great thing about living in a democracy there's never a right time to resign high office however this is as good a time as any budget 2024 is done negotiations have not yet commenced on the next one the institutions of the good friday agreement are working again and our trading relationship with the uk in the post brexit area is settled and stable the new t shook will have a full two months to prepare for the local european elections and up to a year before the next general election my reasons for stepping down are both personal and political i believe this government can be reelected and i believe my party finnegale can gain seats in the next all most of all i believe the reelection of this free party government would be the right thing for the future of our country continuing to take us forward protecting all that's been achieved in building on it but after careful consideration and some soul searching i believe that a new t shook and a new leader will be better placed than me to achieve that to renew and strengthen the team to focus our message and policies to drive implementation and after seven years in office i don't feel i'm the best person for that job anymore there are loyal colleagues and good friends contesting local european elections and i want to give them the best chance possible and i think they've a better chance under a new leader i am standing aside in the absolute confidence that the country and the economy are in a good place and that my colleagues in government from all three parties finnegale finnafall and the greens and the rocked us will continue to work hard for the nation's best interests on a personal level i've enjoyed being t shook leader and a cabinet member since march 2011 i've learned so much about so many things met so many people who i'd never got to meet been to places i would never seen but home and abroad and i am deeply grateful for it and despite the challenges would wholeheartedly recommend a career in politics to anyone who's considering it however politicians are human beings and we have our limitations we give it everything until we can't anymore and then we have to move on i will of course continue to fill my juices of t shook until a new one is elected and will remain as consistency td for double and west i know inevitably there will be speculation as to the quote unquote real reason for my decision these are the real reasons that's it i have nothing else lined up i have nothing in mind i have no definite personal or political plans but i'm really looking forward to having the time to think about them i'd like to take this opportunity to thank my party my college and partners particularly miho and aimin my constituents colleagues and staff for their loyalty and their phenomenal work and i'm going to thank them all in person in the near future most of all i want to finish by thanking the people of ireland for giving me the opportunity to serve them and i promise i'll keep working for ireland and my community in any way i can in the future thank you very much okay and now you have it it's as if he was listening to our speculation actually in advance of that announcement he doesn't have another job it doesn't have another job lined up he simply is had enough he says he's making he's making the decision for public reasons to give his local election european election candidates the best chance of reelection to give his party the best chance of reelection and also for personal reasons which i think quite interesting uh that kathryn uh mentioned or referenced there in her piece okay that was the big breaking news it doesn't happen too often so we extended the nine till noon show for an extra 20 odd minutes again our thanks to john breasant for accommodating that we'll be back tomorrow with i'm sure more reaction to that news