{"id":421138,"date":"2026-04-28T05:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/421138\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T05:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:19:09","slug":"six-reasons-why-leo-varadkar-is-wrong-about-rural-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/421138\/","title":{"rendered":"Six reasons why Leo Varadkar is wrong about rural Ireland"},"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\">This is not just about city versus country \u2013 the former Taoiseach has displayed a flippant disregard for the opportunities and threats facing our country\u2019s economic success\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"'Political commentary should not be reduced to glib point-scoring'. Photo: John Kelly\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3d719630-303d-4815-befc-467be52df76a.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)\">&#8216;Political commentary should not be reduced to glib point-scoring&#8217;. Photo: John Kelly<\/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)\">When Leo Varadkar became Taoiseach, I was one of the farm representatives invited to Government buildings for a beef dinner and an exchange of views. The event, followed by other meetings, gave hope his government would have the back of Irish agriculture.<\/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)\">I also encountered him at the National Economic Dialogue meetings where the social partners outlined budget priorities. His demeanour was always respectful and I formed a positive opinion of him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is not just about city versus country \u2013 the former Taoiseach has displayed a flippant disregard for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-421138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421138","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=421138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}