Independent TD Carol Nolan has said she wants Fine Gael to reject remarks made by former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Matt Cooper’s Path to Power podcast at the weekend.
Mr Varadkar remarked that the agricultural sector often “brings costs on Ireland,” in an interview that reflected on the economic divide between those in rural and urban Ireland.
Farmers, he said,“still see themselves as the people who bring money and jobs into Ireland, where actually a lot of the time they bring costs on Ireland.”
During the interview, Mr Varadkar claimed that what is “in the interests of farmers in the agriculture industry is by and large not in the interests of Ireland as a nation.”
‘WE’RE THE ONES PAYING ALL THE BILLS’
Mr Varadkar further said that urban Ireland needed to be “blunt” with rural residents, adding that: “We’re the ones paying all the bills and you’re the ones in receipt of a lot of subsidies and a lot of tax benefits that other people don’t get.”
Many on social media and some rural representatives have since voiced frustration with the comments.
“To have a former Taoiseach, blithely offering sweeping and denigrating remarks about rural Ireland, should not surprise anyone who has been paying close attention to his party’s policies, policies that, with the aid of Fianna Fáil and the Greens, have placed a stranglehold around rural Ireland for the last 14 years,” said Deputy Carol Nolan on Monday.
“That being said, for Mr Varadkar to let the mask drop in such casual and callous fashion is utterly remarkable. All that spin from Fine Gael about its commitment to rural Ireland now looks completely hollow.”
“Farmers and Irish agriculture are major contributors to this state. They have a value that cannot simply be measured in the kind of monetary and reductionist terms that Leo implies.”
“They were here long before the tech industries and they will be here long after, should those industries ever decide to relocate back to the US or elsewhere,” the Offaly TD said.
‘THERE IS NO THEM AND US’
“Our farmers are grounded here. There is no ‘them and us’. They are who we are as a people and who we have been for countless generations. They are not the rural leeches that Mr Varadkar seems to imply when he speaks about urban Ireland paying all the bills and rural Ireland living off the subsidies that it provides.”
Ms Nolan said she wants to see if Fine Gael Oireachtas members, particularly those in rural counties including Offaly, will “come out and defend Mr Varadkar” or if they will defend their rural communities.
She asked: “Will they have the courage to reject the insult he has heaped upon their constituents, or will they just try and spin this one away too until the next time the mask drops?”
Also on Monday, a young farmer and TikToker, Eoin Lynch, told Newstalk’s Lunchtime Live that he found the comments “annoying,” as he argued that the former Taoiseach“doesn’t have a clue what’s going on behind the scenes”.
“Farming is a gamble, it’s weather dependent,, you know what I mean?” said Lynch. He questioned the argument that farmers are in receipt of subsidies and benefits that others do not enjoy.
He said that contractors “can’t be out in the lashing rain, cutting silage, they have to get a good day for it, that’s the day they’re making money.
“What happens if you get rain for two weeks, you’re not making money for two weeks, you’re sitting at home, fixing machines, whatever.
“It’s a weather dependent job.”