{"id":411266,"date":"2026-04-22T05:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411266\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T05:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T05:58:08","slug":"leo-varadkar-previously-warned-against-creating-an-artificial-divide-between-rural-and-urban-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411266\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo Varadkar previously warned against &#8216;creating an artificial divide&#8217; between rural and urban Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Taoiseach <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/maintopics\/leo-varadkar_topic-5082611.html\"> Leo Varadkar<\/a>, who has come under fire for comments about rural dwellers, had previously warned against \u201ccreating an artificial divide\u201d between rural and urban Ireland and \u201cplaying one off against the other\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>During a 2021 speech, made when he was T\u00e1naiste, Mr Varadkar said he had always \u201crejected attempts\u201d to create such a divide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The former Fine Gael leader has hit headlines by\u00a0suggesting that rural workers are being \u201csubsidised\u201d by urban workers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">On an episode of Matt Cooper\u2019s podcast  Path to Power\u00a0at the weekend, he said: \u201cPeople in rural Ireland are very quick to tell people in urban Ireland that, \u2018we are the real workers, we\u2019re the ones paying the bills, we\u2019re the ones feeding the country\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWe need to be a little more blunt in urban Ireland and say, \u2018actually, that\u2019s not the case. We are the ones paying all the bills, and you are the ones who are in receipt of a lot of subsidies and tax benefits that other people don\u2019t get&#8217;.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">However, in a speech by Mr Varadkar in March 2021 at the launch of  Our Rural Future in Croke Park, he warned against creating a divide.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cI\u2019ve always rejected attempts to create an artificial divide between rural Ireland and urban Ireland \u2014 to play one off against the other \u2014<br \/>East v West, Dublin v the rest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWe are One Nation, and few Dubs are more than a generation or two away from rural Ireland.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Fine Gael has attempted to distance itself from Mr Varadkar\u2019s weekend comments, with T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris saying: \u201cThat it was really important as a country that we pull together\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cWe need to stop defining people based on their geography, based on their profession.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who has come under fire for comments about rural dwellers, had previously warned against&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74989,61,60,3581,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-411266","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-rural-affairs","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-leo-varadkar","12":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411266","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=411266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}