Sinn Féin is to table a motion of no-confidence in Tánaiste Leo Varadkar which will be debated next Tuesday evening in the Dáil.
The party says that this is the ‘right and necessary’ thing to do after it was revealed by Village magazine that the he posted a document labelled ‘confidential’ to a GP friend who was head of the NAGP.
The party’s president Mary Lou McDonald said that since this came to light, An Taoiseach Micheál Martin has decided to ‘sit on his hands and take no action’ and that the Opposition cannot sit idly by.
“Leo Varadkar – while he was Taoiseach – disclosed confidential government information to his friend,” said Mary Lou McDonald.
“He can offer no credible reason for his actions and the truth is that there is no acceptable reason for what happened.
“This was not incompetence or a mistake – this was a conscious decision by Leo Varadkar to give his friend insider information.”
Deputy McDonald said that her party did not take the decision to table a motion of no confidende in the Tánaiste lightly.
“This government has only been in office for just four months, and over that time we had the basis of taking many motions of no-confidence due to gross incompetence and bad decision making,” she said.
“We choose not to do so because of the challenges facing the country. But this is different.
“This is more of the old Fine Gael behaviour where it is about who you know and insiders getting access to the corridors of power.
“It comes after Michael D’Arcy has moved on from his role as Minister of State to the world of high finance in the same way Brian Hayes moved from politics to the banking sector; where he is now their chief lobbyist.
“All of this further undermines the public’s confidence in politics and is totally unacceptable to us.”
