{"id":411841,"date":"2026-04-22T14:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T14:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411841\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T14:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T14:05:08","slug":"leo-varadkar-says-he-went-too-far-and-apologises-for-urban-v-rural-ireland-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411841\/","title":{"rendered":"Leo Varadkar says he \u2018went too far\u2019 and apologises for urban v rural Ireland comments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>EXCLUSIVE\u00a0|\u00a0<\/p>\n<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\">He has faced intense backlash over the comments made on Matt Cooper&#8217;s podcast last week\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Leo Varadkar\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/716f85bd-73ac-45cd-b130-fafa9144888e.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)\">Leo Varadkar<\/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)\">Leo Varadkar has said he \u201cwent too far\u201d in comments about the gap between urban and rural Ireland, and that he \u201cdid not mean to annoy anyone\u201d.<\/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, who stood down from office two years ago, told the Irish Independent on Wednesday: \u201cI apologise to anyone I offended. I genuinely did not mean to annoy anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE\u00a0|\u00a0 He has faced intense backlash over the comments made on Matt Cooper&#8217;s podcast last week Leo Varadkar&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14486,3775,171749,42,3581,43,70,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-411841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-donal-odonovan","9":"tag-fine-gael","10":"tag-fuel-protests","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-leo-varadkar","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-simon-harris","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411841","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=411841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}