Varadkar blasts fools, clowns, and jailbirds

They say people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But, from the second floor of the National Convention Centre in Dublin, Leo Varadkar couldn’t resist hurling these insults at the opposition parties.

As the crowd protesting the household charge outside the Fine Gael ard fheis swelled, Mr Varadkar was tucked away among his own supporters at a discussion forum on transport services.

After thanking grassroots members for their work for the party, he paused and said he would like to spare a moment for the opposition.

“Starting from the bottom,” Mr Varadkar first jeered Independent TD Luke Flanagan, whose priorities, he said “range from septic tanks to cutting turf to smoking weed”. Then it was Mick Wallace, who is “trying to get into jail with one foot and out of jail with the other”. And Mattie McGrath is a “clown” who “regularly turns the Dáil into a circus”, Mr Varadkar said.

He was only warming up when he turned to Sinn Féin, and leader Gerry Adams in particular, who he said is “bilingual, you know, and likes to speak both English and Irish in the Dáil”. But, he added: “Most of the time he can’t understand either language.”

As for Fianna Fáil, “well, we shouldn’t forget them, they’re not gone away you know”, Mr Varadkar sighed.

He said he believed Micheál Martin was sincere in his recent apology for the past mistakes of Fianna Fáil. “But if he thinks that we are going to forget that he was a strong supporter of Charles J Haughey and said nothing until he resigned, and that he defended Bertie Ahern through thick and thin at every opportunity until the very last moment when he was forced to resign, if he thinks that the Irish people are going to forget that, then he is too foolish to ever be taoiseach.”

Disproving his own admission that he is not a people person, Mr Varadkar had party delegates eating out of his hands by the time he told them they had a “huge duty” to support Phil Hogan on the household charge. The nine TDs leading the campaign against the charge are a “motley crew”, he said. “There are two who have served time in prison already,” he said in reference to Joe Higgins and Clare Daly, both of whom received short sentences over their stance on bin charges in 2003. “They are not the kind of people that we should be looking to for leadership. It’s very important for that reason that they don’t succeed in their campaign,” he said to applause.

One of those criticised by Mr Varadkar, Mr Wallace, last night said there was never a question of him facing jail when he was fined €7,000 by the courts in December for not paying his construction workers’ pension contributions on time.

Asked about Mr Varadkar’s comments, he said “the loser does that” because the Government lost the battle on the household charge.