Simon Coveney has said he is “deeply concerned” about the direction Fine Gael would take under a Leo Varadkar leadership as he sought to cast his rival as someone who holds views that would be uncomfortable for party members.
The first hustings of the Fine Gael leadership election campaign to choose a successor to Enda Kenny saw Mr Coveney attempt to portray Mr Varadkar as someone who would pull the party to the right.
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The Cork South Central TD said Fine Gael should seek to represent “everyone in this country”, but Mr Varadkar responded by saying that in trying to stand for everyone, the party risked standing for nothing.
Mr Varadkar said as leader he would bring “definition” to Fine Gael.
“Fine Gael will stand for things, and we will know what they are. Everyone might not agree with us, but I will give Fine Gael definition, and with it something to vote for, something to believe in, and with that success at the ballot box.”
Mr Varadkar said Fine Gael must stand for “middle Ireland, the coping class, the squeezed middle”.
He said cohort of voters “should be our priority”, adding “if they are not our priority they will be nobody else’s”.
He also said he believed he was “the best candidate to widen Fine Gael’s appeal and to broaden the base of our support”.
Mr Varadkar also said that Fine Gael should leave the approach of being all things to all people to Fianna Fáil. “Do that and we end up being nothing to anyone. We tried that many times in the past, and remained in opposition as a result.”
Sleeping bag
Mr Coveney said Fine Gael would decide itself what it wanted to be. “Forget about Fianna Fáil. We represent the man in the sleeping bag tonight on Grafton Street, as well as the man who is creating 1,000 jobs.”
He said the “party I love is about to make a choice about two different viewpoints”, adding that he was “passionate” about one but “deeply concerned about the other”.
The party membership must be “comfortable” with the approach, one that “allows you sleep at night”.
He described the Just Society document of 1965, which focussed on social policy, as the “moral compass of this party”.
Taking aim at Mr Varadkar’s statement that Fine Gael should be for people who get up early in the morning, Mr Coveney said: “Who is asking the questions: Why can’t some people get up early? Why aren’t they motivated? Why are they in a jobless household?”
Mr Varadkar said that when he made that statement he was talking “about people who work in the public and private sectors, commuters, the self-employed, carers who look after loved ones, parents who get the kids ready for school, people who volunteer in their communities”.
The pair also traded barbs over Mr Varadkar’s commanding lead in support levels among TDs and Senators, with the Minister for Social Protection quoting former Ireland soccer international Roy Keane. “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail,” Mr Varadkar said.
Preparation
Mr Coveney said “that preparation was going on for about 12 months, as I understand” – a comment which drew gasps from the crowd.
Mr Varadkar said his team had been preparing for three months, since Mr Kenny indicated he would be standing aside.
In a jibe at Mr Coveney, he said that three months was a long time to prepare, and said that “if you can’t be prepared in three months” it raised the prospect of being unprepared for a general election.
Mr Coveney said the contest had now started “for real” as it marked a shift from the parliamentary party to the membership.“We shift from an electorate of 73 to an electorate of 21,000,” Mr Coveney said, in reference to the rank-and-file members.
He said he was the underdog in this contest, a position he was not used to and didn’t like.
Mr Varadkar said it was a new experience for him to be a frontrunner, which led him to expect strong criticism from Mr Coveney
