Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Simon Harris has apologised to a disability care worker he walked away from when she tried to ask him about low pay in her job sector.
Charlotte Fallon stopped Harris in County Cork on Friday to ask him a question while he was campaigning for the general election.
She wanted to know why the issue of carers’ low pay had been “ignored” in the last government’s most recent budget
The Fine Gael leader disagreed with her and cut their conversation short, but has since expressed regret for not giving Ms Fallon the time she “deserved” to discuss her concerns.
The tetchy encounter between the two has attracted about two million views online to date.
Harris, who is is campaigning to regain the role of taoiseach, said Ms Fallon “was absolutely owed an apology”.
“The buck stops with me entirely here. I’m annoyed with how I didn’t give Charlotte the time last night. She deserved that time,” he said on Saturday.
‘You’ve done nothing for us’
In the encounter in a shop, the care worker told him she was “very passionate” about her job but claimed the disability sector was “a joke”.
“You’ve done nothing for us, our people are suffering,” she told him.
Harris told her it was “not true” for her to say that carers had been ignored in the budget and insisted he was also very passionate about disability.
He tried to bring the conversation to a close by shaking her hand and walking away.
“Keep shaking hands and pretend you’re a good man,” Ms Fallon replied, clearly annoyed by how her questions had been received.
“You’re not a good man because you don’t care about our people,” she added.
The following morning, Harris phoned Ms Fallon to apologise to her and to discuss her concerns in detail.
Speaking later on Instagram Live, he said he “didn’t give her the time that I should’ve given her and I feel really bad about that because it’s not who I am”.
The 38-year-old politician became Ireland’s youngest ever taoiseach (prime minister) in April.
His involvement in politics began at the age of 16, when he began campaigning for better support services for his autistic brother in his home town of Greystones.
Harris added that if he gets a chance to serve as taoiseach again he is determined to prioritise the issue of disability.
‘Who’s going to listen to me anyway?’
Ms Fallon has since given an interview to the Irish Mail on Sunday in which she said Harris had made her “feel small” and she left the shop crying on Friday.
“I felt like, ‘who’s going to listen to me anyway?’ I felt stupid. I felt, ‘you shouldn’t have opened your stupid mouth, silly girl’,” she recalled.
However, Ms Fallon said that Harris “gave me a sincere apology” during their phone call on Saturday, which lasted up to 20 minutes.
“He explained about his brother and his autism, his mother who is a carer and a special needs assistant and I genuinely felt for him,” she told the paper.
She said he offered to keep in contact with her to work with on her concerns, which she said she would be “delighted” to do.
Ms Fallon also said Harris expressed an interest in visiting the charity she works for early next year, which she said she would agree to provided that no media attend.
Despite making amends with Ms Fallon, Harris’s political rivals have been quick to capitalise on the incident, some saying it is an example of how carers have been dismissed by those in power.
Irish voters will go to the polls on Friday 29 November.