Results 32,381-32,400 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: Not in detail. Certainly, I did not know it was going to have the difficulties it had subsequently - the financial irregularity and so on. I did recall that for a long period, even up to then, it was a relatively large organisation. Notwithstanding all that, it had well over 1,000 members. We all remember during the period of the medical cards for the under six-year-olds, the instances it...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: I was not aware that it was in such difficulty and I am not sure how many people were at the time. It emerged in weeks that it was in serious difficulty. What I did know was that it had hundreds, if not thousands, of members who were GPs and had been very influential. The same would apply to any representative body, NGO, or union. One operates with them on the basis that they have a...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: I accept, as I said in my statement, that this is not the way I should have gone about this. It was a document that I shared on a confidential basis with the president of the NAGP, an organisation that represented hundreds, if not thousands, of GPs. I wanted to get them on board, or at least that they would not oppose it and to demonstrate to it that there was nothing in it that had not...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: A friend, yes, not a close friend. He is someone who turned up at one event during the time I was running for leader of Fine Gael. He is also someone who since then organised a rally outside the Dáil on Molesworth Street-----
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: -----that many Members attended, where he said -----
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: The Deputy does not want to hear it - where he said that Fine Gael was responsible for destroying general practice and the health service.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: He was very definitely not a political supporter at that time. Some have brought the letter from the NAGP to members of my party to attention, which clearly threatens to campaign against us. Many Members were at the rally which he organised on Molesworth Street where he told everyone that Fine Gael was responsible for destroying the health service so he was certainly not a political...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: The president of the NAGP would have got it. I have lots of friends who are GPs, they did not get it.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: He did not get it because he was a friend of mine, he got it because he was president.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: Essentially, as I explained earlier, because I wanted to share it with him on a confidential basis. I wanted him to see there was nothing in the deal, or nothing of substance, that had not been publicly announced, that there was nothing in it worth opposing or agitating against and that it was a good agreement which was good for GPs, for general practice, for the public and patients and one...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: As the Cabinet memo of 9 April says, the engagement with the IMO had concluded. There were some minor changes subsequently. They were of no major significance. We did not have to go back to Cabinet on them. A press release had already been issued. The salient, commercially sensitive financial details had all been put out in the public domain on 4 April. The HSE launch was on 6 April...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: What I could have done would have been to bring him in for a formal briefing and gone through the contents of the document. That would have been the right way to do it.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: What I was doing, as I said earlier, was sharing this on a confidential basis. What the IMO wanted then was to go around the country and do its own meetings to share it with its members. I respect that is how it wanted to do it.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: That is a conversation between two other people. It is very difficult for me to comment on it.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: I do not know about trouble but certainly it would have been annoyed. I have seen a comment from a former president who expressed displeasure. I have seen comments from other members of the IMO, including council members, who said that this is a non-story. I have also seen comments from other council members saying that the NAGP was an amateur organisation that they thought this was such a...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: They did not get it in an official capacity. I provided it to them on a confidential basis in the way I did for the reasons I did. I explained that already.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: No I do not, I did not receive any advantage from it-----
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: -----as some people are alleging. He was not a political supporter of mine, certainly not at that time. I have already pointed out that many Members attended a demonstration that he organised outside the Dáil which was very critical of the Government. I gave it to him because he was president of the NAGP. I do not know what advantage it confers on someone who is president of the...
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: The person is already the most senior officer in the organisation.
- General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)
Leo Varadkar: I have very strong legal advice on this that the front page is defamatory, that a large part of the content of the article is defamatory, particularly in relation to the suggestion of criminality. The article claims that the benefit I got from this was that Dr. Ó Tuathail wrote nice tweets about me a year later. Not only is that defamatory it is also laughable. I received no benefit...