Meanwhile, Minister for Finance Simon Harris still expects to introduce income tax reductions in the next budget despite the three-quarters of a billion euro in additional spending and tax cuts announced in the last three weeks. 

Elsewhere, the communications minister drew the ire of the NUJ over his criticism of media coverage of last week's fuel blockades. On the media front, there's a kerfuffle over at Gript media, and the lawyers are involved, while Fintan O'Toole casts an eye over recent events and what it tells us about the emergence of the far right. He urges the government to "wake up to the realisation that its fragile authority can vanish overnight."

SIPTU members at the National Ambulance Service (NAS) will take strike action next month in a dispute over updated salary scales, while The Journal reports that nurses are now travelling in groups to and from work to try and avoid racially motivated abuse. New figures show that hospital staff have been subjected to racial abuse or prejudice on almost 200 occasions in the past five years.

Finally, with up to 200,000 Irish jobs at risk due to the rapid growth of AI technology, could it bring Ireland back to the dark days of 2008?

Your Zen this morning marked my introduction to Clannad. This song was released in 1982, when the audience for the UK TV series  Harry's Game was entranced by the haunting vocals of Moya Brennan.

Have a lovely day.

NS