WEXFORD TD Mick Wallace has welcomed the acknowledgment of a Government Minister tipped to be the next Taoiseach that Wexford has “not done as well as it should have done for decades now” and that there should be more invested in Rosslare Europort.

In response to a question from the local Deputy, Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar highlighted how he had lived in Wexford for a number of months while working as a hospital doctor and said he “got to know the county and liked it a lot.

“It has a lot to offer.”

Deputy Wallace had questioned him on the 18 per cent of the Wexford workforce on the live register.

The Wexford constituency representative stated that the Government had no difficulty in highlighting a national unemployment rate of 6.4 per cent, but they were reticent about acknowledging Wexford’s live register figure.

Minister Varadkar accepted that trends in the live register can give an indication of underlying trends in unemployment.

He said he didn’t believe “that everything is rosy in the garden of Wexford.

“I appreciate that there are long-standing problems,” he added.

The Fine Gael Minister highlighted, however, how the county’s Rosslare Europort may be set for a boost as “we may, depending on trade arrangements with Britain, need far more direct links with France.

“We should invest more in Rosslare Port,” he said, in terms of a response to the UK leaving the European Union.

Read more in the Wexford Echo.