Results 32,401-32,420 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I have advice on that. I have not decided yet. They appear to be goading me, wanting me to do so, which gives me some degree of suspicion, quite frankly. I am told that it is a fringe publication which is largely self-funded, has no editorial board, does not have a legal team and that suing it would be like suing somebody on Twitter. I have yet to decide what I will do.

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: On the first point, I am not somebody who goes around suing the media at all. It is not the way I operate. I know that lots of people do so and that some people in this House have done so, but it has not generally been my modus operandi. What I seek usually is a right of reply. If one does not get a right of a reply, then there is the option of going to the Office of the Press Ombudsman....

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: On the Official Secrets Act, there are two aspects to this that are of significance. One is that the ambit of the Act is limited to persons holding public office, which is a term defined in section 2 of the Act. The definition of public access expressly excludes Members of either House of the Oireachtas. In addition to that, the Official Secrets Act makes clear that the persons who are...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: As I explained earlier, this was somebody who is a friend but not a close friend. I have lots of friends who are GPs. I did not give them a copy of this document. I only gave it to this particular person, Dr. Ó Tuathail, because he was president of the NAGP and for no other reason. I did so because we had made a Government commitment, announced many times by the Minister for Health...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I do not know if I would have asked. When one is Taoiseach, one is Head of Government. From time to time, one can, and one does, personally intervene in issues. I know some people may see that as going over the head of a Minister but when one is Taoiseach, one is the head. When I was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, there would have been occasions when the then Taoiseach, Enda...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: The document had been agreed and engagement with the IMO had concluded. The salient details, including financial information and all the commercially sensitive aspects of it, were published. I gave the House the IMO statement from 4 April. The document was launched by the HSE on 5 April. On 6 April, it was welcomed at an event by me and the Minister, Deputy Harris. The full text of it...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: It was a confidential document and one that I shared on a confidential basis with somebody who was the president of the NAGP, a GP organisation, for the reasons I explained. It was going to be up to every individual GP to decide whether he or she wanted to sign up to this. We were in that space where the deal had been done and we were now trying to get as many people as possible to sign up...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: As I said before, this was not the right way to do it. I can totally understand why some people in the IMO may feel that their confidence was broken. I know some have been critical for that reason over the past couple of days. That is why I have apologised for that today and that is why I have accepted that I should have done this in a different way. Equally, however, there have been...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: It is important to restate that negotiations were concluded on 3 April. If it had been before that, we would be talking about a very different situation. The negotiations were concluded on 3 April. That is what it says in the memorandum the then Minister for Health brought to Cabinet on 9 April. The salient details, including the financial information and the commercially sensitive...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: -----and phoning dozens of GPs to promote the deal, the details of which were widely known by hundreds of GPs, and that the fact that the NAGP did not know shows its amateurism. That is one view.

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: To my recollection, I did not but, as I said, the negotiations had concluded at this stage. If we had got into a real battle about trying to get GPs to sign up, a repeat of 2015, the then Minister, Deputy Harris, and I would have many conversations about it. The fact, however, is that things had moved on. Things move on very quickly in politics, particularly in the Department of Health....

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I explained my motivation. My only motivation was-----

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I wanted the president of the NAGP to see, on a confidential basis, or a secret basis if the Deputy wants to use that term, that this was a good agreement, that there was nothing in it that had not been substantially announced publicly and that there was no reason for that organisation to oppose or agitate against it as it had in 2015. I wanted to do that confidentially, which is why I used...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: All I can give the Deputy is the explanation I have given as to why I did this. I wanted to keep it confidential. We had an informal communications channel. I hoped he would see it, read it and understand that what I was telling him was true, which was that everything of interest had already been published and that there was nothing in it which was contrary to what was in the public...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I have not leaked anything of this nature. It depends on what the Deputy means. I do not believe I have leaked confidential Cabinet information but, let us be honest about it, there is not a person in this House who does not speak to journalists off the record. I have not leaked confidential Cabinet information, no.

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I have not leaked confidential information.

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I appreciate the Deputy is entitled to make that statement although, obviously, I do not agree with it. Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are not involved in this. It happened in 2019, during the term of the previous Government. I do not believe they should be held to account for this in any way. This is something I did and for which I take responsibility.

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: He has made no such demands of me. That is not the way we operate. We are getting to know each other well and are working well together. I make no demands of him and he makes no demands of me. With regard to the Regulation of Lobbying Act, under that Act the person carrying out the lobbying is responsible for registering that activity. As a Deputy, Deputy Mattie McGrath is lobbied all...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: I thank the Deputy. First, I do not. Second, the premise of the Deputy's question seems to suggest that in some way I sought the head of Deputy Cowen or Deputy Calleary but I absolutely did not. The case of Deputy Cowen was handled by the leader of Fianna Fáil in the way he thought best. I found out the former Minister, Deputy Calleary, had resigned one morning when I woke up in bed...

General Practitioner Contract: Statements (3 Nov 2020)

Leo Varadkar: The Village magazine produced a photograph of us at a Pride march, although I am not sure which one it was. We all know the innuendo here. We all know what it is.