Conservative member of Irish parliament tells Leo Varadkar 'the people have spoken - so time to pack your bags'

Mattie McGrath, an independent TD and one of the more prominent socially-conservative voices in the Dail, linked Mr Varadkar’s decision to quit to the results of the recent referendum earlier this month, in which Mr McGrath’s side was decisively victorious.

Essentially Mr Varadkar’s party Fine Gael plus Fianna Fail and the Greens (who together make up the coalition government), plus Sinn Fein, People Before Profit and the Social Democrats (the combined opposition) all wanted to rewrite the Irish constitution.

Their plan was to take out the bit which referred to mothers as having an especially strong role in caring for children, and change another bit to distance the idea of raising children from marriage.

The results were overwhelming: 68% rejected the first change, and 74% rejected the second – with every single constituency in the country (except for one southern suburb of Dublin) coming out with majorities against both changes.

Speaking in the Dail on Wednesday, Mr McGrath said: “You wasted 23 million Euro – probably twice that – on a referendum campaign supported by all political parties here except for the smaller parties. We, the rural indepdendents, opposed that.

"The people have spoken now. The first chance they got to give you a comment on you since you cobbled your government together. So it’s time for you to go, and go with haste.”

He said the fact Mr Varadkar intends to cook up a deal to appoint a new taoiseach, rather than have an election, is “completely unacceptable”

“You have lost the faith of the people overwhelmingly, in every part of the country except barely by the skin of someone’s teeth in Dublin south,” he said, adding that “every place else is fed up of your antics… time to pack your bags”.

Though Fine Gael was historically seen as a more conservative-leaning party, Mr Varadkar’s tenure has been a progressive one.

Under him, abortion was introduced far more widely in 2018 via the removal of a portion of the Irish constitution which guaranteed “the right to life of the unborn and… the equal right to life of the mother”.

His government is also now pushing through a “hate crime” bill which would make it easier to convict people of crimes for things they say.

It would make it illegal to say something that “would be likely to” incite “hatred”.

This would cover “gender expression or identity” as well as “descent”, “national origin” and “sex characteristics”.

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Mr Varadkar was also in favour of race quotas, telling thre Dail in 2020 there was “a need to set a target to have a number of people from ethnic minorities in areas of the public service”, saying the civil service was “very white” and “that needs to change”.