THE DECISION TO remove Verona Murphy from the Fine Gael ticket for the upcoming general election is “looking better by the moment”, Minister for Health Simon Harris has said.
The party confirmed yesterday that the former Wexford by-election candidate has been dropped from the upcoming general election ticket.
“The decision to deselect her is looking better by the moment,” Harris said today speaking to reporters.
“I think anybody who engages in stoking what I believe are to be unfounded racist fears has no place in the Fine Gael party.
“I thought the comments this morning… gave a great insight perhaps into why it’s best that she’s been deselected.”
In response to Harris’ comments, Murphy said he was as one of the worst Ministers for Health.
“Well, I think what you have there is probably one of the worst Ministers for Health. He’ll probably go down in history deflecting from his own ineptitude. I don’t know if it warrants its comment,” Murphy said during an interview with Newstalk.
Earlier today in an interview with Alan Corcoran on South-East Radio, Murphy said her apology stands but her words have been “misrepresented in the media”.
“Do we have to wait to have a London Bridge incident on Wexford Bridge?,” she said today.
“Am I, as a person, not allowed to raise the security issue that these unrestricted migrants bring?”
The decision to deselect Murphy from the Fine Gael ticket was reached after the controversial by-election campaign last month.
During the campaign, Murphy was criticised for a series of comments about migrants.
She apologised after linking asylum seekers to Isis and calling for them to be “deprogrammed”.
She also made further comments linking migrants to the terrorist group and said that Isis had “manipulated children as young as three or four”.
Asked about these statements earlier today, Murphy said she stands by her apology but claims to be privy to information other TDs would not.
“I’m at the coalface. As president [of the Irish Road Haulage Association], I have attended security briefings on unrestricted migration,” she said today.
“Briefings given by Interpol, the MI5, the UK Border Force. I doubt anybody in Dáil Éireann has as much experience of the migrant issue as I have.”
With reporting by Christina Finn and Adam Daly
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