Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has said he does not want to make an issue of his personal life during the Fine Gael leadership election, and hopes others will not do so either.
Mr Varadkar was responding to recent media coverage of his personal life and his partner. He was speaking at an event in Glasnevin to promote back to work enterprise allowance.
"I'm not going to make my personal life and my family life an issue in any campaign and I hope and trust others won't do either," the Dublin West TD said.
In 2015 Mr Varadkar announced that he was gay.
Mr Varadkar also said if he became party leader and Taoiseach, he would honour the confidence and supply agreement with Fianna Fáil.
He said it was a deal between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as parties, and not respective party leaders.
Mr Varadkar's only declared contender for the leadership, Simon Coveney, on Friday said he had no issue with the Taoiseach's decision at attend the first EU leader's summit on the Brexit talks, ahead of Mr Kenny's expected handover to a new leader.
Mr Coveney said transitions happened all the time in politics and that Irish civil servants were “on top of preparing for Brexit negotiations”.
“I will trust the Taoiseach’s judgement whether or not he attends the first number of leaders summits- that will be a matter for his own judgement.”
Mr Coveney said he was not getting into a formal pitch for the leadership pitch at the moment.
“Ministers like me have a lot of work to do in our own briefs and I don’t think we should allow ourselves to get down into the distraction of a leadership contest that is not even underway yet.”
He said “anybody who sees my diary or sees Leo Varadkar’s diary or Richard Bruton’s diary or Frances Fitzgerald’s diary will see that they are busy Ministers and very focussed on solving people’s problems which what a Government is there to do.”
Mr Coveney also dismissed reports claiming some internal party polls showed he had a lead in terms of support within the parliamentary party.
He said "a lot of people in Ireland are addicted to politics" so the level of speculation was understandable.
“I am sure there will be lots of different views, lots of different opinion polls and I think, when you have been around in politics for a while like I have, you don’t take anything like this too seriously.”
