{"id":410616,"date":"2026-04-21T20:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T20:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/410616\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T20:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T20:54:08","slug":"leo-varadkar-comments-on-rural-ireland-to-be-raised-by-angry-tds-at-fine-gael-meeting-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/410616\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo Varadkar comments on rural Ireland to be raised by angry TDs at Fine Gael meeting \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leo Varadkar<\/a>\u2019s comments that urban Ireland was \u201cpaying all the bills\u201d are due to be raised at Fine Gael<\/a>\u2019s parliamentary party meeting this week.<\/p>\n

Several TDs, representing largely rural constituencies, were critical of the former taoiseach\u2019s comments<\/a> when they spoke to The Irish Times on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Tipperary South\u2019s Michael Murphy said he would raise the matter at the weekly meeting of the party\u2019s TDs and senators. <\/p>\n

Murphy said he was \u201cvery angry\u201d and \u201cconcerned\u201d about the comments, which came on the Path to Power podcast<\/a> last weekend. The TD said in the wake of fuel protests<\/a> \u201cthe timing couldn\u2019t have been worse\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the former Fine Gael leader\u2019s words suggested \u201can out-of-touch mentality\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m deeply angered by the comments, I have to be very honest,\u201d Murphy said, saying there was a lot of anger within the Fine Gael parliamentary party.<\/p>\n

He said he had received a similar level of contact from constituents over the matter as he had done over the fuel protests. <\/p>\n

\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201cabsolutely\u201d the case that Varadkar should apologise. <\/p>\n

On the podcast, hosted by Matt Cooper<\/a>, the former Fine Gael leader had said: \u201cWhat\u2019s in the interest of farmers and the agriculture industry is by and large not in the interest of Ireland as a nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd farmers and people in that sector don\u2019t 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

Varadkar also said \u201cpeople in rural Ireland are very quick to tell people in urban Ireland that you know, \u2018We\u2019re the real workers. We\u2019re the ones paying all the bills. We\u2019re the ones feeding the country\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think maybe we need to be a little bit more blunt in urban Ireland and say \u2018actually, that\u2019s not the case\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the ones paying all the bills and you\u2019re the ones who are in receipt of a lot of subsidies and a lot of tax benefits that other people don\u2019t get and maybe we need to sit around the table and have an honest discussion about some of that kind of stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cavan-Monaghan TD David Maxwell said the comments were \u201cill-judged\u201d and \u201cill-timed\u201d, arguing that rural Ireland was a \u201cvery important part of the Irish economy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dublins, Corks and Galways, with FDI [foreign direct investment], the cities are a big payer of people employed, but we\u2019ve 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,\u201d Maxwell said.<\/p>\n

He stopped short of calling for Varadkar to apologise for the remarks, saying he had always been \u201cforthright in his views\u201d. <\/p>\n

Wicklow-Wexford TD Brian Brennan said the comments were \u201cway out of order\u201d and said he had contacted Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon<\/a> to thank him after the Minister described the comments as \u201cunnecessarily divisive\u201d.<\/p>\n

Brennan said he was \u201cdefinitely annoyed\u201d over the intervention from Varadkar, although he did not call for an apology, saying: \u201cI\u2019d leave that entirely up to himself.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many issues we\u2019re trying to address; long before the fuel crisis many farmers were struggling,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cI feel it\u2019s so far removed from what is actually going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at the tillage sector. Look at the age group that\u2019s down there. Why is there a conveyor belt of young farmers going to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clare TD Joe Cooney said Varadkar\u2019s was an \u201cawful statement\u201d and one \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be supporting\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cA statement like that I don\u2019t think is supporting rural Ireland and I\u2019m very disappointed with it,\u201d he said, saying he felt it was \u201cputting urban ahead of rural\u201d. <\/p>\n

Fine Gael parliamentary party chair Miche\u00e1l 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. <\/p>\n

He said that during the post-boom financial crisis \u201cit was rural Ireland that kept things going\u201d.<\/p>\n

Describing Varadkar\u2019s comments as \u201cunhelpful\u201d, he said the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting was an \u201copen forum\u201d where members could bring up any issue. <\/p>\n

Varadkar declined to comment when contacted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leo Varadkar\u2019s comments that urban Ireland was \u201cpaying all the bills\u201d are due to be raised at Fine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[125726,15469,46,615,3775,171749,4500,61,60,3581,180397,22479,69745,43,180395,180396],"class_list":{"0":"post-410616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cavan-monaghan-constituency","9":"tag-clare","10":"tag-cork","11":"tag-dublin","12":"tag-fine-gael","13":"tag-fuel-protests","14":"tag-galway","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-leo-varadkar","18":"tag-longford-westmeath-constituency","19":"tag-martin-heydon","20":"tag-matt-cooper","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-tipperary-south-constituency","23":"tag-wicklow-wexford-constituency"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410616","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=410616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}