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First May, then Johnson, for Rantka, then Martin.

For three long years as Prime Ministers and T-Shirts have come and gone, one man has remained

the face and the voice of Ireland in the negotiations about Brexit and what relationship could

come next between the UK and the EU, Britain and Ireland, North and South.

My guest on political thinking this week is Ireland's Foreign Minister Simon Coveney,

a member of a family of those known in Ireland as the merchant princes who built the prosperity

of Ireland's second city.

The boy who'd struggled with a terrible stutter who'd been expelled from school went into

politics, was forced to make a choice in his 20s after his father's sudden death.

He'd been a former government minister and a former Lord Mayor.

This week Coveney Jr has been in Brussels meeting other EU foreign ministers to talk about,

guess what, Brexit.

Simon Coveney, welcome to political thinking.

Thank you very much Nick, that's some introduction.

Well I want to talk about some of that with you, that remarkable personal journey you've been on.

But first just give us a glimmer of what life is like for you at the moment.

I said you were in Brussels, how is diplomacy in this pandemic?

How difficult is it to do what you normally have to do?

Well we end up doing a lot of our diplomacy via video conference now.

It's my job to obviously keep channels of communication open all of the time with the

British government in particular and obviously to stay very close with Michelle Barnier

...