Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

What the Tánaiste did in handing over confidential documents to a GP friend was wrong. That the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, was not aware of that sharing of information was also wrong. It displayed a lack of trust in the then Minister. The bottom line is that the then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, displayed a complete lack of judgment and undermined his colleagues in government and in his party. If such a situation involving one of his colleagues in government were to arise, I doubt that the Tánaiste would take the same approach. The record speaks for itself in this regard, with the Tánaiste having thrown colleagues under the bus in the past in similar situations.

I reiterate that Leo Varadkar has done wrong. He needs to face the consequences of his actions. In my opinion, his party needs to reprimand him. It is Fine Gael's responsibility to deal with this matter. The current Government, led by Deputy Micheál Martin, was not a party to the current Tánaiste's action and should not be drawn into this mess. Fine Gael needs to stand up and demonstrate transparency in its action to deal with this issue. It should be dealt with internally by Fine Gael.

We are in the convention centre at an additional cost of more than €25,000 of taxpayers' money to have this debate. It is a waste of taxpayers' money. We are in the midst of a global pandemic and Brexit will arrive in less than two months, yet here we are debating in the convention centre a motion about the actions the Tánaiste took while he was Taoiseach in the previous Government. Surely we have more important issues to debate.

I will support the motion of confidence in the Tánaiste. This is not because I believe that he did nothing wrong. In fact, what he did was wrong and he should face the consequences for doing it, but action should be taken by his party, Fine Gael. The Government has far more important issues to deal with than this. Covid-19 and Brexit need our full attention and we need a strong Government to deal with them. In my opinion, the Government, led by Deputy Micheál Martin, is a strong one and needs to be given the opportunity to govern. What we do not need is for matters like this to arise and deflect from the real issues of the day.

I will support the motion of confidence in the Tánaiste for the reasons I have outlined, but I expect his party to take some form of disciplinary action so that this kind of behaviour does not happen again. We cannot have one rule for Leo Varadkar and a different rule for everyone else.

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