Varadkar defends FG's dramatic fall in opinion polls 

A Fine Gael source tonight also said they expect more TDs to follow in the footsteps of their colleagues who are leaving politics. It leaves Mr Varadkar facing an electoral crisis in the next general election. Picture: Niall Carson/PA

Leo Varadkar has defended the dramatic fall in Fine Gael’s popularity in the latest opinion poll and the decision of another party TD to retire.

The Sunday Times/Behaviour & Attitudes poll has suggested Mr Varadkar’s party dropped from 23% last month to just 15%, an all-time low.

It comes as Carlow-Kilkenny politician John Paul Phelan has announced he will retire as a TD at the end of the Dáil term. Mr Phelan’s decision follows Kerry TD Brendan Griffin and Donegal TD Joe McHugh who will also not be putting their names forward in the next general election.

A Fine Gael source tonight also said they expect more TDs to follow in the footsteps of their colleagues who are leaving politics.

It leaves Mr Varadkar facing an electoral crisis in the next general election. 

“The situation is within Fine Gael, we’ve a large number of TDs who have more than 20 years service, some of up to 40 years service,” he said.

They’ve been in government, they’ve been in opposition, they’ve given decades of service to their communities, to their country and to their party and they’re not going to contest the next election and that is the nature of things when people have done a job for 20 or 30 years. They often want to move on and I entirely understand that and that’s the reason why they’re doing so.

The Fine Gael leader claimed his party can add 10 or 15 new TDs in the next election.

However, it is expected that other TDs will also announce that they will not be running again, but some are awaiting the constituency boundary redraws which are due to be published over the summer.

Mr Varadkar acknowledged his party lost seats in the 2020 general election but said they added five “new TDs”, two of whom are now junior ministers — Neale Richmond and Jennifer Carroll MacNeill who Mr Varadkar said are “very much on the pathway to promotion in my view".

“And the opportunity now arises within Fine Gael in the next election to add maybe 10 or 15 new TDs to our parliamentary party. This is a period of renewal of our party and that’s a welcome thing and those opportunities are now there,” he added.

However, the Taoiseach said in relation to his party's fall to 15% in the opinion poll: “I find it extraordinary that so many people in the media and maybe even outside the media tend to put so much into one opinion poll which is just not consistent with all of the others.”

Earlier this year, the Irish Examiner reported that up to nine Fine Gael TDs are expected not to run in the next general election, with Mr Griffin later confirming he would not be putting his name forward again.

While some, including Bernard Durkan, Michael Creed, Fergus O'Dowd, and Charlie Flanagan, are viewed as having served a full career in politics, party members have sounded alarm that others who are considered as being the "middle generation" in the Dáil are also questioning their futures.