Quotes from Leo Varadkar

In any walk of life, it's very easy to judge people's actions in retrospect.

Fine Gael needs to be Fine Gael and needs to stand its ground. It should not sacrifice its politics for position in government.

Enda Kenny has the full support of the Fine Gael parliamentary party.

Fine Gael is the party of opportunity, and no matter what background you come from, we give people a chance, and it gave me a chance.

Unless people who voted for unionist parties are suddenly going to vote for a united Ireland, which I don't believe will happen, a border poll will be defeated.

Nobody that I know would ever say that I'm sexist.

I'll demand of myself and my own government what, in the past, I insisted of others.

Geographically, we are at the periphery of Europe, but I don't see Ireland in that way. The way I see us is as an island at the center of the world.

One of the big problems in Dail Eireann is the lack of women.

There should be no economic border at all between the North and South.

What I do now is I train in the mornings, and people ask me why I do it. I do it for two reasons: first of all, to keep in shape, but secondly, I think training, sport, and physical activity is really good for mental health.

If you want to change things, politics is the best way to do that.

It's not something that defines me. I'm not a half-Indian politician or a doctor politician or a gay politician for that matter... it is part of my character, I suppose.

I suppose I've always put the career, the job and politics, all of that first.

I was with my mum in the shops, a ladies boutique or something, and I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. I think you're supposed to say an ambulance man or a footballer or a soldier or something like that, and I told all my mother's friends that I wanted to be Minister for Health. She was mortified, needless to say.

I was appointed to Cabinet three times; on no occasion did I pitch for what position I wanted.

My mum wanted me to be a doctor like my dad, and at 7, I really wanted to be a politician, and I managed in my mind to combine the two.

Whatever happens with Brexit, what I am absolutely convinced will not happen is that free movement of individuals, free movement of people, will not change, North and South without passports.

I do think corporations should pay their tax.

We have an educated and cynical electorate.

It's not that I'm afraid to be tagged with the label of right-wing or even centre-right; I just don't believe it properly describes either the choice that we face politically or what I'm trying to say.

Neither of my parents are involved in politics or anything like that, but my dad is political, certainly, and we would have always talked about politics and religion and money, and all those things that you're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table, we did.

Mum is from West Waterford, Dungarvan. She's a farmer's daughter. She's a nurse. She left home very young - I think she was 18 - and went off to train as a nurse in England. My dad is from India, just south of Mumbai. He was one of the first in his family to go to college, and he went to England in the '70s; he emigrated there.

I've never had a choice of which government department I would hold. I've always been assigned a department by the Taoiseach.