Fine Gael leadership contender Leo Varadkar has described Sinn Fein's demand for a border poll as "alarming", insisting a vote on Irish unity "at any point in the near future" would be counterproductive.

In a speech to Fine Gael members in Dublin-Rathdown, the Social Protection Minister also said that Fine Gael needed to take a "renewed interest" in the North.

He said he was "very concerned" that Sinn Fein might seek to "manipulate and exploit" recent developments to create division in both parts of the island, and build support North and South.

"The demand for a border poll is alarming," he said. "It is a return to a mindset in which a simple sectarian majority of 50pc plus one is enough to cause a change in the constitutional status of thesee this and prepare for it," Mr Varadkar said.

Brexit, he added, would inevitably force the country to reassess its political relationship with the North and Britain as a whole. He also said Fine Gael should insist there would be no border again. A soft border comprised a camera on a pole, he said, and then the camera and the pole could become targets.

The minister said he did not think it possible for the North to have special status in the EU for as long as it remained part of the UK, but it could have special arrangements that allowed the status quo to remain in place.

The EU had shown itself to be "creative and pragmatic" when it came to other territories like Greenland, Andorra and the far-flung French