Varadkar 'should apologise for remarks on rural Ireland' – Mayo TD
Aontú TD for Mayo Deputy Paul Lawless has said that Leo Varadkar's weekend remarks are not simply offensive — they are the clearest explanation yet for what happened to rural Ireland under his watch.
He was referencing remarks by Mr. Varadkar on Matt Cooper’s podcast in recent days in which the former Taoiseach suggested that urban people are the “ones paying all the bills” and that rural people are “the ones in receipt of a lot of subsidies and a lot of tax benefits that other people don’t get."
Deputy Lawless said: "What Leo Varadkar said on the Matt Cooper podcast this weekend wasn't a slip of the tongue. It was an admission.
"His comments that urban Ireland pays the bills while rural Ireland lives off subsidies are a window into the thinking that drove his entire period in government. What happened to rural Ireland under his leadership now makes sense."
"Look at the record. When Varadkar was Minister for Transport, he personally removed the West and Northwest from the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), a decision that removed our region from accessing funding.
"The Western Rail Corridor, the Galway ring road and countless other projects in the west were shelved. Garda stations across rural Ireland were closed. Post offices were shut.
"This was not accidental neglect - this was policy, driven from the top, by the same man who now goes on podcasts to explain that rural Ireland is a financial burden on the rest of the country."
"And now he turns his attention to farmers and their subsidies. Let me explain how those subsidies came about.
"Over decades, Brussels created a food production model in which the price of produce leaving the farm gate has been driven down to the point where farming in Europe is simply not viable without subsidy.
"The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), is not some generous gift to farmers. It is what makes food production in Europe possible at all.
"And now Leo Varadkar, who spent years in government supporting that very model, has the audacity to stand up and complain about the subsidies that same model made inevitable. It is breathtaking."
"One more fact Mr. Varadkar conveniently ignores: Ireland is one of the highest net contributors per capita to the European Union, and 75% of what we get back comes in the form of CAP payments.
"Without the farming sector, that money stays in Brussels. The farming sector is the single biggest vehicle through which Irish taxpayers recover what they put into Europe. To describe that as a burden is not just wrong — it is breathtaking.
"His comments this weekend are not a surprise. They are a summary. A summary of a decade of neglect, of a Dublin-centric agenda pursued at the expense of rural communities, and of a fundamental contempt for the people who produce our food, maintain our countryside, and hold our rural towns together. Leo Varadkar should apologise - not just for this weekend, but for the record his own words have now explained."