Sinn Féin has called on one of its councillors to apologise and withdraw comments he made about Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.
Former MMA fighter and current South Dublin County Councillor Paddy Holohan made the remarks in recent episodes of his podcast 'No Shame'.
In one episode, Cllr Holohan said: "It bugs me to death to understand that he leads this country, and that he's so separated not even from society... he's so separated from the history of this country.
"I'm for immigration... I'm for bringing people into the country [...] What you'll get is people turning up in this country motivated... for a new start.
"Leo Varadkar's blood obviously runs to India... his great-grandfather is not part of the history of this country.
"Leo obviously is... he's an Irish citizen... but his passion doesn't go back to the times when our passion goes back to."
In a separate episode, Cllr Holohan said he would prefer to have a "family man" running the country.
He said: "Not against Leo or anything like that... but to me I want a family man running the country. I want somebody that knows what it's like to have kids - hopefully, boys and girls.
"When you're creating the policies and all of the stuff that's going to go on... that you're like 'right, it makes sense... I know what it's like to collect my [children] from school... I know what school-time traffic is like'.
"The man that is a family man, goes to work, looks after his kids, has come up through the system, has experience... maybe as a solicitor as well and has that experience... that's who should be running the country. Somebody who knows what the masses of people are going through."
A Sinn Féin spokesperson today said Cllr Holohan should apologise and withdraw the remarks.
The spokesperson added: "Paddy Holohan has made comments on his podcast that have caused offence, and are quite obviously not the views of Sinn Féin."
And indeed, he has apologised, saying his comments were misrepresented.
