Leo Varadkar comments on rural Ireland to be raised by angry TDs at Fine Gael meeting – The Irish Times

Leo Varadkar’s comments that urban Ireland was “paying all the bills” are due to be raised at Fine Gael’s parliamentary party meeting this week.

Several TDs, representing largely rural constituencies, were critical of the former taoiseach’s comments when they spoke to The Irish Times on Tuesday.

Tipperary South’s Michael Murphy said he would raise the matter at the weekly meeting of the party’s TDs and senators.

Murphy said he was “very angry” and “concerned” about the comments, which came on the Path to Power podcast last weekend. The TD said in the wake of fuel protests “the timing couldn’t have been worse”.

He said the former Fine Gael leader’s words suggested “an out-of-touch mentality”.

“I’m deeply angered by the comments, I have to be very honest,” Murphy said, saying there was a lot of anger within the Fine Gael parliamentary party.

He said he had received a similar level of contact from constituents over the matter as he had done over the fuel protests.

“I certainly will be raising it at the PP [parliamentary party meeting] and as a PP whether we can issue correspondence reflecting the anger of the PP to our former leader and former taoiseach.”

He said it was “absolutely” the case that Varadkar should apologise.

On the podcast, hosted by Matt Cooper, the former Fine Gael leader had said: “What’s in the interest of farmers and the agriculture industry is by and large not in the interest of Ireland as a nation.

“And farmers and people in that sector don’t quite realise that yet. They still see themselves as the people who bring money and jobs into Ireland … a lot of the time they bring costs on Ireland.”

Varadkar also said “people in rural Ireland are very quick to tell people in urban Ireland that you know, ‘We’re the real workers. We’re the ones paying all the bills. We’re the ones feeding the country’.”

“I think maybe we need to be a little bit more blunt in urban Ireland and say ‘actually, that’s not the case’,” he said.

“We’re the ones paying all the bills and you’re the ones who are in receipt of a lot of subsidies and a lot of tax benefits that other people don’t get and maybe we need to sit around the table and have an honest discussion about some of that kind of stuff.”

Cavan-Monaghan TD David Maxwell said the comments were “ill-judged” and “ill-timed”, arguing that rural Ireland was a “very important part of the Irish economy”.

“The Dublins, Corks and Galways, with FDI [foreign direct investment], the cities are a big payer of people employed, but we’ve got to remember rural Ireland carried this country for the last 80 or 90 years and farmers have a lot more to give than Leo [acknowledged] in his remarks,” Maxwell said.

He stopped short of calling for Varadkar to apologise for the remarks, saying he had always been “forthright in his views”.

Wicklow-Wexford TD Brian Brennan said the comments were “way out of order” and said he had contacted Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon to thank him after the Minister described the comments as “unnecessarily divisive”.

Brennan said he was “definitely annoyed” over the intervention from Varadkar, although he did not call for an apology, saying: “I’d leave that entirely up to himself.”

“There are so many issues we’re trying to address; long before the fuel crisis many farmers were struggling,” he said, adding: “I feel it’s so far removed from what is actually going on.”

“Look at the tillage sector. Look at the age group that’s down there. Why is there a conveyor belt of young farmers going to Australia.”

Clare TD Joe Cooney said Varadkar’s was an “awful statement” and one “I wouldn’t be supporting”.

“A statement like that I don’t think is supporting rural Ireland and I’m very disappointed with it,” he said, saying he felt it was “putting urban ahead of rural”.

Fine Gael parliamentary party chair Micheál Carrigy, a TD for Longford-Westmeath, said he did not agree with the comments, arguing that rural Ireland had less public transport infrastructure such as the Luas or Dart.

He said that during the post-boom financial crisis “it was rural Ireland that kept things going”.

Describing Varadkar’s comments as “unhelpful”, he said the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting was an “open forum” where members could bring up any issue.

Varadkar declined to comment when contacted.