Yesterday in the Dáil, with an EPA report released the same morning showing Ireland on track to deliver only half the greenhouse-gas reductions required by 2030, Taoiseach Micheál Martin was asked by Labour leader Ivana Bacik about the government's record on climate. He answered with this. "We will achieve far more on climate than perhaps your approach, or even at times the Green Party approach, because we do need to bring people with us, and that consensus has broken down." Read it again. Slowly. What did he commit to? Nothing.

He did not say what his government will do. He did not say when. He did not say who broke the climate consensus, or what it would take to fix it. He said "we'll do better than them" without naming a single thing he will actually do. He said the consensus is broken without saying who broke it. He called Bacik "naive" so she would look like the unrealistic one for asking him to keep promises his government had already made.

This is not a politician failing to argue. This is a politician succeeding at saying nothing.

Where they learn this

Every TD elected to the Dáil gets media training pretty much before the seat is warm. The parties run their own programmes in-house. There is a separate Irish industry built on top: the Communications Clinic, Terry Prone's training firm and successor to Carr Communications, has been coaching senior politicians across every party in this country for decades. MKC Communications (formerly Murray Consultants), Edelman Dublin and the agency cluster sit around it.

What do they teach? Not how to make an argument. Not how to be honest about what your policy is. They teach a set of moves with names, and the moves all have the same purpose, which is to keep you from saying anything you could be held to later.

The moves include:

  • Bridging. Get asked a hard question, pivot to your prepared message. Never answer the question. Always answer the message.
  • Hedged comparison. "Perhaps your approach." Never commit to "ours is better." Always leave a way out.
  • Externalising agency. "The consensus has broken down." Never say who broke it. Make the failure look like weather, not a decision.
  • Calibrated condescension. Call your opponent "naive" or "fundamentalist" or "purist." Position yourself as the grown-up in the room by labelling, not by arguing.
  • "Perfect is the enemy of the good." The all-purpose phrase that converts policy failure into wisdom.

Martin's sentence yesterday uses every single one of these. It is a textbook exercise. There is not a clause in it the trainers did not put there.

What it is for

The job of this kind of talk is to get through one more news cycle without committing to anything that could be held against you next year. The training produces just enough surface plausibility that the question gets dropped, the news report gets filed, the cameras move on and the actual policy keeps doing whatever the actual policy was already doing.

What is the actual policy on climate? The Minister for Environment, Darragh O'Brien, said it on RTÉ Radio 1 the same morning. The 2030 target will be missed. The new ambition is "early in the 2030s." That is the policy. The hedged-comparative passive-voice Taoiseach-speak is the wrapper that converts that retreat into something Martin can call wisdom and the news desks can repeat without flinching.

Why "bring people with us" means the opposite of what it sounds like

The phrase "we need to bring people with us" is the standard cover for declining to do anything that would actually affect the people with the money.

The measures that would meaningfully cut emissions and would also touch concentrated wealth: ending fossil-fuel subsidies, taxing windfall energy profits, restructuring the agricultural support architecture that flows upward to large landowners, funding home retrofit through progressive taxation instead of the carbon levy that hits wage earners hardest. Every one of those gets refused on "consensus" grounds. Every measure that pushes the cost downward onto people on wages stays in.

"Bring people with us" almost always means "do not ask the wealthy to carry anything." When you hear it from a senior Irish politician, the next move is reliably to push more of the cost onto everyone else, while taking credit for being the realist in the room.

This is the tax-wealth-not-work problem in a single phrase. The training is built around it. The training is not politically neutral. It is the production line that converts protecting concentrated wealth into language that sounds like governance.

Why the opposition keeps losing this

When Bacik responds with counter-claims about climate ambition, EPA figures and the Green Party's record in office, she is treating Martin's sentence as if it were an argument. It is not. It is a media-trained holding action. The opposition response that would actually land would be something like.

"That sentence does not parse. It does not contain a commitment. It does not name an agent. It is what media training produces. The country has been listening to it for thirty years and the targets keep getting missed. Here is what your government's policy actually is, in plain language, with the things your training removes put back in: who broke the consensus, who is being protected from the cost of the transition, who is being asked to carry it instead and what the missed targets actually cost the country."

Then put them back in. Name the missed target. Name the wealth-holders being protected. Name the actor who broke the consensus. Name what the cost of the retreat is, who pays for it and who is exempted from paying.

The summary

A poor politician with excellent media training. The training is the first thing they get when elected. The training is not neutral. It is the production line that converts protecting concentrated wealth into language that sounds like governance.

When a senior politician says nothing in a sentence that fills thirty seconds of broadcast time, he is not losing the argument. He is doing his job. The job is to not commit. The training works.

Calling it what it is starts with refusing to pretend the sentence said anything.

Source notes. Quoted Dáil exchange and Minister Darragh O'Brien's RTÉ Radio 1 comments are from Leaders' Questions and morning broadcast coverage of 27 May 2026, on the day the Environmental Protection Agency released its 2026 emissions projections showing Ireland on course to deliver approximately half the greenhouse-gas reductions required for the 2030 target. The Communications Clinic is the Dublin training firm founded as the successor to Carr Communications, of which Terry Prone is the public-facing principal. MKC Communications was formerly Murray Consultants. Companion to The Office Is the Dose.

Overwatch Report is an independent publication. We have no financial positions in any entity mentioned.