I NEARLY CHICKENED OUT OF RESIGNING, SAYS LEO
FORMER taoiseach Leo Varadkar has revealed he nearly ‘chickened out’ of his resignation from the role the night before he made the shock announcement.
Mr Varadkar, who left the post three weeks ago, said he doesn’t regret his decision to step down so far, but nearly didn’t go through with it. He also said he made the decision just days before he announced it last month.
The Fine Gael TD also indicated he would await the outcome of the local elections in June before deciding if he will run again, to see if he is ‘needed’ by the party.
‘I think the hardest thing was actually going through with it. I nearly chickened out the night before, but it was definitely the right decision for me and the right decision for the country too,’ he told Patrick Kielty on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show last night.
‘As another former prime minister said to me once, there’s really only three ways you cease to be prime minister of your country.
‘It’s a huge privilege to get there, quite hard to leave. So you either die, lose or resign.’
Mr Varadkar said that as a son of an Indian immigrant to Ireland, he is ‘worried about the extent to which migration and anti-migrant feelings are going to become part of our politics’.
‘When I was a kid, growing up in Blanchardstown I was the only guy who was, you know, slightly darker and had a funny name,’ said the former taoiseach.
Mr Varadkar received a round of applause from the studio audience when he said there was no room for hatred and violence in a democratic country.
‘We need to stand up to anyone who promotes hatred or promotes violence, promotes anger, whatever your political views are. There’s no justification for that in a democratic country,’ he said.