Simon Coveney denies that Fine Gael has drifted too far to the left

Enterprise Minister says it is 'a party of the centre'

Simon Coveney said Fine Gael is 'a party of the centre that has lots of different views'.

Simon Coveney has denied that Fine Gael has drifted too far to the left.

The enterprise minister was responding to criticism from his party colleague Michael Ring, who urged new leader Simon Harris to abandon plans for a bill which envisages harsher punishments for hate speech.

Mr Ring, a former cabinet member for Fine Gael, said that the party had gone too far to the left wing of politics.

"We are not a left-wing party, we are a centre party, and Fine Gael has to move back into the centre again, and more to the right," Mr Ring told RTÈ's This Week.

"We need to go back to core issues, law and order, we need to be doing more on law and order.

"We need to go back to small businesses and farmers and we need to forget about a lot of these social issues we have been raising over the last few years that have been annoying people and upsetting people."

However, Mr Coveney rejected this idea, saying that Fine Gael is "a party of the centre" and  that there is an encouragement of debate.

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"I don't think I'd be describing Fine Gael as a left-wing party per se, but we're a party of the centre that has lots of different views, unlike other parties actually we encourage active debate within the party and you often see that on a Wednesday night or a Tuesday night, whenever the parliamentary party meeting happens and that's that's democracy.

"We're we're a big party that attracts people with strong views in different areas. And that's the way it should be."

Justice Minister Helen McEntee, who has proposed the hate speech legislation, said that Mr Ring was focused on just a small proportion of her work.

"He's referring to two pieces of legislation out of quite a number of pieces that I've been working on for four years as almost 20 bills have been enacted in the Department of Justice, the first being Coco's law, which came about after a young girl died by suicide because of bullying she was receiving online."