Confidence in Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence: Motion Dail Éireann — 2021-09-15 ============================================================ Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West The mask slips as well, when it is not on. I repeat, a Cheann Comhairle, that I do not make these points to understate the fact mistakes were made nor to avoid accountability for them but rather to ask for balance and proportionality. Sinn Féin does not meet its own standards as a political party or as a government in the North. If we cannot have confidence in Simon Coveney, how can we possibly have confidence in Deputy Pearse Doherty, its treasurer, who is responsible for all its financial affairs, or in Minister Conor Murphy, the only politician on this island who has been found by an independent body to have acted with a degree of cronyism and sectarianism in a public appointment and yet he still serves in office today? How could we possibly have confidence in the person who presides above it all and turns a blind eye to it all, Deputy Mary Lou McDonald? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-09-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-09-15