Micheal Martin has rebuffed Leo Varadkar’s offer of a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail grand coalition.
The Fianna Fail leader was on the campaign trail again this morning when he told reporters that he believes “people want change.”
He said it is for this reason that he said he was rejecting the Taoiseach’s offer made during the Virgin Media One leaders’ debate.
Mr Varadkar said on the debate that an FF-FG coalition was not his “preferred option” but that he was open to it.
Mr Martin emphatically said that he was not open to it when pressed on the issue in Dublin Central with election candidate Senator Catherine Ardagh.
He said: “People want change in this country, that’s the message we’re receiving.
“They want Fine Gael out of office.
“I’ve made it very clear we want to go into government with other centre parties, clearly Labour and the Greens are the ones we’d be interested going into government with, obviously that’s to be determined by the people - and others as well - and that is our very clear position."
“That is our position,” he repeated for emphasis.
“Fine Gael need to come out of government, they’ve been there too long, they haven’t delivered on key issues such as housing.
“The people want a new government, that means a completely new government.”
