Government hits out at 'mystic' Micheál Martin's comments
The Government has attacked "mystic" Micheál Martin for claiming he can read the minds of Fine Gael Ministers but refuses to provide any clarity on confidence and supply himself.
Both the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Health Minister Simon Harris hit out at the Fianna Fáil leader calling on him to "get on with it" and agree to a new deal to keep the Government in place until summer 2020.
Their criticism came after Mr Martin took a swipe at Fine Gael, claiming that the Taoiseach is coming under pressure from his ministers to call a General Election: "The view is that some of his ministers have been pushing him to angle for an election for the last three or four months. The word is that Simon Harris wants to get out of Health; Eoghan Murphy wants to get out of Housing because they are not making any progress there."
"The only people who have introduced an aura of instability about the Government is the Taoiseach and his Ministers," Mr Martin told RTÉ's Sean O'Rourke programme.
He accused Fine Gael of having a "self-absorbed" and "juvenile" approach to talks which "beggars belief".
Responding, Mr Varadkar said his political opponent "seems to know the mind of Minister Murphy and Minister Harris but does anyone know his mind?"
The Taoiseach said he wrote to Mr Martin in August asking that the Confidence and Supply agreement be extended to "give the country the stability it needs".
We still don't yet know whether Fianna Fáil or Micheál Martin are up for that, rather than reading the minds of Minister Murphy and Minister Harris perhaps he might share with us his own mind and his own thought on this.
Mr Harris said it is "time to actually get on with it and extend confidence and supply so we can bring political certainty to Ireland".
Taking aim at Mr Martin, the Minister said: "I didn't hear Mystic Micheál's comments but just to be very clear his party actually ran out of the Department of Health when he was Minister for Health, left Mary Harney sitting in the Department of Health and the Fianna Fáil mantra was 'don't touch it, don't come anywhere near it'."
Meanwhile, Mr Varadkar said the €3bn tax announcement made at the Fine Gael Ard Fheis will not be the only tax measure that Fine Gael would implement:
If and when an election comes we will produce a manifesto with further detail on our tax proposals, but for example, we would propose to continue to increase tax credits and anyone who pays income tax would benefit from that.
