Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will continue to do so for as long as I hold this office. It was never and will never be my intention to plunge the country into an unnecessary general election. I did everything I could over the weekend and in the past few days to ensure that would not be the case because we have a lot of work to do as a Government, not least with phase one and phase two of the Brexit talks coming up. The country does not need to find itself in a situation where we would have a caretaker Government, potentially for three or four months, during that very important period. As I have always said, I will do my best to make the Government work and last.

To answer the Deputy's question, I regret the fact that the former Tánaiste offered her resignation this morning but she did so for all of the right reasons. I did not seek it; she offered it of her own volition.

She did so for the reasons I outlined in my statement, namely, in the interests of the country and the good governance of this country.

To ensure that the date on which the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, was informed of the first controversial email and the date that I saw it are correct on the record, the Secretary General of the Department told the Minister on Monday, 13 November, that he was going to retire. The Minister was also informed of the existence of a document on that date, at which point he said it should be sent to the tribunal right away. Both he and I saw it for the first time on 20 November, one week later.

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