The Irish Times view on Varadkar’s comments on rural Ireland: over-simplistic but still useful
Retired taoisigh tend, for the most part, towards reticence following their departure from office. One exception was the late Garret FitzGerald, who continued to offer his thoughts on the issues of the day in this newspaper for many years after leaving politics. Another, it now seems, is his Fine Gael successor Leo Varadkar, who has made a number of interventions on current affairs since stepping down and shown himself not averse to lively argument, including on social media.The most provocative of these contributions came last week in a podcast interview in which Varadkar took issue with those involved in the fuel protests and challenged their claim to represent the authentic working people of Ireland. He then went further, arguing that urban workers paid the bulk of the taxes on which the State depends, that rural Ireland was the principal beneficiary of subsidies and tax reliefs unavailable to others, and that the interests of the agriculture sector frequently ran contrary to the broader national interest.The reaction was swift and predictable. Rural and agricultural representatives expressed outrage while Fine Gael TDs from rural constituencies, already bruised by the political fallout from the protests, expressed dismay.Varadkar has since apologised for causing offence and acknowledged that some of what he said was over-stated. It was, and it was also over-simplified. Whatever his intention, the comments give ammunition to those who argue that public policy at the highest level is shaped primarily by urban elites, at the expense of those living beyond the main population centres.READ MOREThe Dry: Wry and relentless, this series has matured into an earnestly funny dramedyRituals by Danielle McLaughlin: Working magic with the tiniest detailsI’m Grand Mam at the 3Olympia: Like microdosing the energy of a 1200-strong hen partyFive homes on view this week in Dublin from €375,000But in forcing a binary choice between rural and urban Ireland, Varadkar may also inadvertently have performed a service of sorts. Some of the rhetoric that accompanied the protests was itself exaggerated and reductive. The farmers and contractors who took part had legitimate grievances, but those grievances were not well served by the sweeping claims made from behind the barricades. Varadkar’s intervention invites a more rigorous scrutiny of those claims.The row exposes the inadequacy of the rural-urban frame itself. State policy, whether expressed through taxation, subsidy, regulation or the provision of public services, operates across a complex social landscape that resists reduction to a simple geographic or sectoral argument, whether delivered from a picket line or a podcast studio.In the early stages of his career, Varadkar drew attention with a frankness that was unusual in Irish political life, ruffling feathers within his own party with disparaging comments about its former leader, FitzGerald. Twenty years on, that instinct appears to have returned. How well it serves him or the causes he wishes to advance remains an open question.
