{"id":409804,"date":"2026-04-21T10:03:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T10:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/409804\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T10:03:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T10:03:10","slug":"agriculture-minister-hits-back-at-divisive-leo-varadkar-for-claiming-farmers-bring-big-costs-on-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/409804\/","title":{"rendered":"Agriculture Minister hits back at \u2018divisive\u2019 Leo Varadkar for claiming farmers \u2018bring big costs on Ireland\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Martin Heydon criticises his former Fine Gael boss over suggestion urban dwellers \u2018pay all the bills\u2019\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776765790_771_video.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Agriculture Minister hits back at \u2018divisive\u2019 Leo Varadkar for claiming farmers \u2018bring big costs on Ireland\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon has hit out at his former boss, Leo Varadkar, for being \u201cunnecessarily divisive\u201d in his commentary on rural Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The former taoiseach has caused huge unease within Fine Gael after claiming urban dwellers need to be \u201cmore blunt\u201d in telling country people \u201cwe\u2019re the ones paying all the bills\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Martin Heydon criticises his former Fine Gael boss over suggestion urban dwellers \u2018pay all the bills\u2019 Agriculture Minister&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3775,171749,61,3928,60,3581,150953,22479,43,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-409804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-fine-gael","9":"tag-fuel-protests","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ifa","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-leo-varadkar","14":"tag-margaret-donnelly","15":"tag-martin-heydon","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-simon-harris"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}