Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2022-03-22 ============================================================ Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West Reflect on it, think about it and come back here tomorrow or the next day and take it back, if you want to. The truth is the Deputy looks down on me. The Deputy thinks that because I am from Dublin, I am middle-class and I do not talk the way the Deputy talks and I have the accent I have, somehow I do not understand real people but he is wrong. I am elected just as much as the Deputy is. Everyone in this House has a mandate. We have a mandate because real people elect us. That is precisely why we stand here. I know as well as Deputy Michael Healy-Rae does that he had the opportunity to serve in government. I was there in 2016 when the opportunity was there for the Deputy to serve in government and for him to be a Cabinet Minister but the Deputy turned it down. The truth is the Deputy would rather come in here----- --- 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/2022-03-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:15+00:00 Sitting date: 2022-03-22