It's amazing that people were talking about me as a future leader back in 2011.

We have an educated and cynical electorate.

Politicians should trust people with the truth. Very often, we don't do that.

I don't see myself in politics at 51. I definitely want to do something else.

When a hospital is very crowded, there will be a real push to make sure people get their X-rays, get their tests and, you know, 'Let's get them out in four days'.

When a hospital isn't under as much pressure, you start to see things slowing down, and it might take five, six, seven days to get the person discharged, and that's the length of stay, so it's all these different factors come into play all the time.

Obviously, nobody likes to read or hear about anyone having a bad experience in our hospitals.

I am not so naive to think that I can make every problem in the health service go away. No minister can. And never will be able to.

I suppose I've always put the career, the job and politics, all of that first.

Neither of my parents are involved in politics or anything like that, but my dad is political, certainly, and we would have always talked about politics and religion and money, and all those things that you're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table, we did.

I don't think you can make America great again by trying to go back to an old coal-based manufacturing economy that doesn't really exist anymore.

I do think corporations should pay their tax.

The traditional divide between left and right, capital and labor, small state and big state, high taxes and low taxes doesn't define politics in the way it did in the past.

Prejudice has no hold in this Republic.

It's not that I'm afraid to be tagged with the label of right-wing or even centre-right; I just don't believe it properly describes either the choice that we face politically or what I'm trying to say.

If I was to describe myself in terms of a political philosophy, I'd cast myself as a social and economic liberal, which is typically what people describe as being left-of-centre on social issues and right-of-centre on economic issues.

My difficulty with the whole right-left construct is that I don't think it describes modern politics or the modern choices that people face in the world.

Unless people who voted for unionist parties are suddenly going to vote for a united Ireland, which I don't believe will happen, a border poll will be defeated.

I am a gay man. It's not a secret, but not something that everyone would necessarily know.

I'm not going to tell the American president how to run America, but I think it is important that when friends are speaking to each other that they are able to be very frank in the views that are exchanged, and I certainly will be doing that.

If Britain doesn't stay in the Single Market or Customs Union, we are very much in favor of a free trade agreement between the U.K. and Europe. We don't want Britain to be punished for its decision to leave, and it is not in our interests for Britain to be punished because we may be the ones who lose out as much if not more than them.

Geographically, we are at the periphery of Europe, but I don't see Ireland in that way. The way I see us is as an island at the center of the world.

Those of us who are in the centre believe in opening up to the world, believe migration on balance is a good thing if it is managed properly, and believe that multilateralism is the best way to solve problems.

I won't be allowing my own background or my own sexual orientation to dictate the decisions that I make.