„Wir sind diejenigen, die alle Rechnungen bezahlen“: Leo Varadkar sagt, dass städtische Gebiete das ländliche Irland finanzieren
https://www.thejournal.ie/leo-varadkar-path-to-power-fuel-protests-7016675-Apr2026/
Von nitro1234561
„Wir sind diejenigen, die alle Rechnungen bezahlen“: Leo Varadkar sagt, dass städtische Gebiete das ländliche Irland finanzieren
https://www.thejournal.ie/leo-varadkar-path-to-power-fuel-protests-7016675-Apr2026/
Von nitro1234561
47 Kommentare
Its true. Pity he didn’t clarify this when in charge
He’s not wrong, there seems to be a perception in rural Ireland that office workers are lesser and don’t contribute to the country
90% of all food produced by farms in Ireland is for the export market, urban dewlers are paying taxes to subsidise farmers on feed equipment fuel so they can export the food and claim there feeding the country. There feeding a country yes, but not this one.
Capital cities across Europe have the concentration of high paid services job like finance and tech. Of course they pay for everyone’s lunches. They also pay for a much higher cost of living.
Punch down, sell off everything, regret it in the next decade.
FFG textbook BS.
On behalf of all us culchies……..
THANK YOU.
Unpopular opinion but I like him.
Too honest for his good.
Because of their reckless tax base. Whilst keeping the housing crisis limited in Dublin’s and let run rampant around the rest of the country. They certainly have their ways of vindicating themselves
It was FF and FG led councils and governments that made a disgrace of our planning system so you’ll forgive me if I care little what a FG neoliberal stalwart has to say about this issue.
https://preview.redd.it/ap8nftleqyvg1.jpeg?width=420&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=966e4557169ba464e5fbe0638cec3ba995b907ad
Farmers are the most catered to people in Europe. You wouldn’t know it based on how they act when something doesnt go their way.
I hate farmers I hate farmers I hate farmers I hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmersI hate farmers!!
Wow, after numerous years of disliking him, his politics, his punching down on working class stiffs, his disdain for gentlemanly parliamentary behaviour, his lickspittle attitude towards any other world leaders, we finally agree on something.
Yes Varadkar, that’s what happens when you concentrate literally everything in three cities and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves.
American multinationals are paying all the bills. The likes of Abbvie have there main operations in Sligo and Westport. But their head office from where their taxes are filed is in Dublin.
You remove the American multinationals then everyone including Dublin is being subsidised. You include them then it appears like Dublin and cork where there taxes are filed regardless of where the plants are actually located then it appears like they are subsidising people.
Sometimes, I really do think that Varadkar is somewhere on the spectrum, because for a clearly very intelligent man, he can be *incredibly* gauche.
Not wrong. We’ve only 2 counties that aren’t met receivers of tax money. Those are cork and Dublin.
If tax was distributed proportional to payment much of rural Ireland would have next to zero services.
Shut up, Leo! He hates rural Ireland. Your ma is from Wexford.
He said something very disparaging about the rural county my Mum’s from.
He’s going to annoy people making that point and I think he’s making it too bluntly and in a way that stirs urban vs rural divides rather than bringing them together, but I think Ireland frankly needs to get over itself sometimes too. We were a rural society decades ago. There were cattle markets in the middle of what is now sophisticated housing in hipster parts of Dublin – cows being herded on urban streets was a common part of life until the early 1970s.
However, things changed, the economy grew and urbanised and the reality of life now is most of us live in urban areas, cities and their hinterlands and most of us work in sectors that have little to do with farming and agriculture and most of our income is coming from hosting the pharma and tech sector, something we’ve been doing since the 1960s. It’s not new – this is what Ireland is now. We still like to pretend it’s Dev’s vision of “Comely maidens dancing at the crossroads.” That was a fantasy then and it’s still a fantasy now, even more so.
I think we do ourselves a huge degree of damage and disservice by setting up dichotomy and divide and failing to recognise reality. We also tend to completely overlook and undermine the cities outside of Dublin and towns by this “dublin vs down the country” mentality which is another thread but it links to this obsession with culchie vs city that seems to just bubble up here all the time. It’s bad for urban Ireland and it’s bad for rural because we are basing policy and politics on a place that doesn’t exist, while undermining the place that we actually live in.
Leo, there’s a whole world of possibilities when you drive past the M50 instead of around it!
Not to defend Leo because he’s a knob head, but during the protests many farmers were stating they paid the bills of Ireland and they were in control. This was during interviews on virgin media news at 5.30pm and the 6pm rte news. So I suppose what he’s saying is that rural Ireland like farmers do not pay the bills of Ireland it is in fact urban areas, correcting the false narrative that the farmers believe.
Should urban areas be concentrated as they are, no but that’s another discussion.
I do agree with a lot of the comments , but I do believe Leo also raises a lot of fair points. There are a lot of government subsidies and tax breaks for farmers and rural communities. The opposition to mercusor was for the benefit of farmers but to the disadvantage of the country as a whole . To anyone who has not listened to the podcast – I’d encourage them so you can hear what he is and isn’t saying .
Well yeah half the workers in urban areas probably live in rural areas
Absolutely no time for Leo, but as someone who grew up rural and on a farm – I’ve zero time for delusions about the country side either. PAYE workers by far make the single biggest contribution to the Irish state via the taxation system. So much so that some of the biggest demonstrations in this country ever resulted from this in the 1970s.
The self employed (and that includes farmers) simply do not make a comparable contribution. Most of what happens in agriculture here does not end up on our plate. It’s beef and dairy for export. 80% of our food is imported.
All this rural/urban culture war divide and cliches about the central role of farmers is absolute nostalgia given how many people in farming families work off the land now too in cities and towns. Transversing both daily wit the magic of motorways.
There needs to be a huge facilitated transition to sustainable food and agriculture on this island – very little of what’s floating around the fuel protest discourse is even touching on that.
Nor does it on the fact that there are only approximately 1500 agri-contractors in the country. And less than one in 25 in our working population are employed across industries like farming, forestry, fishing etc.
And if anything has fucked rural life, it’s the death of villages due to motorway living and the plague of one off housing entirely dependent on cars. People may not like to hear that, but it’s a fact.
It’s not the 1930s FFS. The sooner we stop codding ourselves about this shit, the better.
They had an opportunity to put WFH into law and they didn’t. That absolutely could have helped decentralise everything
If they built infrastructure in or near towns and villages they’d get the investment into them
See I’m rural and I do understand the big urban areas pull the most in tax and most importantly I don’t believe in this „city slickers“ nonsense.
What’s going on here is an attempt at divide and conquer once again and Leo is being used seeing as he isn’t a current in office politician so the government won’t get blow back like they have constantly lately.
I’m also sick of this bollox about 80% of our food is imported (which is true) so essentially fuck the farmers we don’t need them.
The entire reason farmers get grants is an EU wide policy. The whole reason is to make sure Europe and individuals European nations have food security and access to cheap food.
Maybe as security in the event of the likes of Trump, Israel, Iran casing worldwide chaos and prices going up like crazy and fuel could become so scared and expensive we not be able to import as much? Where do ye think the food will come from in a national emergency?
We had the fuckin government only back a few years ago begging farming to start tillage as the grain from Ukraine couldn’t get here cause of Putin.
Now it’s back to fuck the farmers.
This is nothing but the government pulling the strings and trying to sow chaos between rural and urban Ireland, who they saw uniting lately in a lot of places.
I hope to Christ if it ever comes to pass we get food shortages I’ll see Leo being the one eating grass on the side of the road along with this government pals.
Leo really should run for election and try to push for some industry in rural areas.
This will always be the case, in the same in UK (England to others + London and a handful of southern counties to every other region) and probably elsewhere in Europe. It’s not going to change. What can change is that with a bit of investment you can bridge the gap more, even if that’s just high earners living in rural areas. Ireland is too centralised politically and economically
It annoys people to hear this, but it needs to be understood. There is a widespread perception in the countryside it’s the other way around, I regularly hear farmers I know say it.
Obviously that’s not the end of the story, because there’s stuff like decentralisation and food security to think about along with it, but this is a particularly widespread misconception that could do with being deflated.
You could also say that higher earners pay the bills for lower ones.
He wouldn’t be saying that on a podcast though
SHUT UP LEO
What complete & total shite. The man presided over a government that proactively neglected investment in rural Ireland helping lead to the over development of Dublin, which resulted in jobs & population density outstripping housing availability.
Its pretty hard for rural Ireland to compete on par economically with Urban areas when its not given the infrastructure despite every rural person also paying taxes. Urban people pay tax, they get roads, water services, sanitation, trains, services, public transport. Rural people pay the same taxes, they get told to go f**k themselves, grow the urbanites food for them, build their own sewerage & water supplies but pay their share for urban sewage systems they’re not connected to. They get no trains, fewer services & negligable public transport unless its an after thought to put the odd bus stop in a village or 2 the bus is passing through anyways.
The deep irony of claiming Urban Ireland FUNDS rural Ireland when rural Ireland simply gets no funding at all never mind being subsadised
Cool. Let’s all move to Dublin. Presume there’s availability in housing etc.?
You have to remember an awful lot of rural business gets booked in towns and cities. His point is akin to people in the countryside pointing out that the potatoes you eat in Dublin, the water in your taps etc. comes from the countryside. No shit Leo.
Yeah fuck that though… he mightn’t be wrong but let’s not forget the real divide – the wealthiest 1% globally own 50% of the wealth while we fight amongst ourselves for breadcrumbs
This is so maddening. Successive govts have literally GUTTED hospitals and train stations around the country, forcing people to move to Dublin. Where do all the motorways go? You can’t centralise the economy to one location and then complain about the effects of that on Dublin
42% of the countries employment is based in a county where it holds 26% of the population. If he wants an even spread put good paying jobs out of the city and into adjoining counties. I’d say the population of Dublin would easily drop to 20%
Doesn’t mention that a lot of people move or commute to Dublin for work. The people commuting then don’t see the level of input in their communities. Just a thought!
These comments will be interesting.
This sub has been quite negative on the fuel protesters but Leo isn’t a popular figure. Lots of cognitive dissonance around
His usual divide and rule bullshit, this time urban vs rural, to deflect from powerful/corrupt vs powerless/average-joe.
If Dublin built a moat around itself tomorrow, there would be immediate rolling power blackouts, and it would shortly run out of fuel and food – even just the first of which, would drop its GDP next to zero…
„in my opinion the state shouldn’t provide care“
The man was a cunt. He is a cunt and shall for ever fucking be a cunt. If it’s not opposing gay marriage while being gay it’s digging up homeless, a festival of the Black and Tans and now this. Not all heroes wear capes but this cunt will keep on cunting.
Narcissistic/ main character syndrome this guy has is top tier. He’s neighbors kicking him up the arse that much in Dublin are they?
More from this idiot , he couldn’t even handle the job he had . Now we have to listen to him again .
An rural ireland feeds urban ireland so whats his point ?
A reminder that while while collar jobs are great monetary value, if we don’t have workers, farmers and producers we would not have a society and that value can have many forms ✨
*grabs popcorn*