The Connacht Tribune<\/a> reported that Tubridy made the comments while speaking at Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s centenary celebrations in the Galway Bay Hotel in Salthill over the weekend.<\/p>\n\u201cI am fascinated by politics, fascinated by public service and fascinated by Fianna F\u00e1il as a political party, the ups and downs, the slings and arrows. Some people go to the sporting ground and watch football. I follow politics,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked about Tubridy\u2019s comments today, the Taoiseach said: \u201cI always dreamed I\u2019d win an All-Ireland with Cork \u2013 we all dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went on to say he didn\u2019t mean the comment disparagingly and that Tubridy would \u201cbe very welcome to come into politics\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always encouraged young people to participate in politics and people generally. We need more people engaged in politics and participating,\u201d Martin added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know whether he was serious about that or not, but I do know he\u2019s very conscious of his heritage, and he\u2019s very conscious of his family background, which has been a very distinguished one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tubridy\u2019s grandfather Se\u00e1n Tubridy was a GP and member of Fianna F\u00e1il and had two terms as a TD for Galway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he is also related to David Andrews, a former Fianna F\u00e1il politician who held several ministerial roles, and Barry Andrews, a current member of the European Parliament.<\/p>\n
Martin said Tubridy \u201chas the DNA\u201d and also an interest in politics and current affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAOISEACH MICHE\u00c1L MARTIN has said that Ryan Tubridy would be \u2018very welcome\u2019 to enter politics, after the former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15049,895,4500,68708,61,60,7038,1843,43,2733,6084,15152,280971],"class_list":["post-663751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-dail-eireann","tag-fianna-fail","tag-galway","tag-galway-west","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-politics","tag-micheal-martin","tag-news","tag-october","tag-ryan-tubridy","tag-taoiseach","tag-watch-out-galway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663751","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=663751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}