Global Courant
Harris will be elected Ireland’s youngest-ever prime minister at the next session of parliament on April 9.
Simon Harris will become Ireland’s youngest prime minister after being appointed as the new leader of the ruling Fine Gael party.
The 37-year-old said it was the “absolute honor of my life” to be appointed party leader on Sunday, replacing Leo Varadkar, who resigned unexpectedly on Wednesday, saying the party would be better governed under a different leader.
Harris will be elected the youngest ever Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland – known as the Taoiseach – at the next sitting of Parliament or Oireachtas on April 9, thanks to the support of Fine Gael’s coalition partners.
“I think he has done a very good job of securing the leadership in as comprehensive a way as he has done,” Fine Gael deputy leader Simon Coveney said.
Harris told members of the center-right party that he would repay their faith with “hard work, with blood, sweat and tears, day in and day out with responsibility, with humility and with civility.”
Harris outlined his priorities, insisting that Fine Gael “stands for law and order” and telling members he wanted to “take back our flag” from the nationalists, to loud cheers.
He also said he would pursue a “more planned and sustainable” immigration policy, following increased tensions over the issue, and that he would “fight against the dangers of populism.”
Internationally, he called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and condemned Russia’s “heinous illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
He will have no more than a year to save the coalition from defeat in the parliamentary elections.
Over the past three years, opinion polls have identified Sinn Fein, a left-wing party that supports unification with Northern Ireland, a British province, as the preferred choice to lead the next government.
However, two polls on Sunday confirmed a recent trend in which support for Sinn Fein fell from the highs of 12 to 18 months ago.
A Business Post/Red C poll before Varadkar’s departure, when taoiseach put Sinn Fein’s lead over Fine Gael at six percentage points, while an Irish Independent/Ireland Thinks poll showed a five-point lead.
Harris, a former Minister for Education, Research and Science, is best known for taking responsibility for Ireland’s COVID-19 response.
He recently said he became involved in politics as a “quirky, moody teenager” who was troubled by the lack of educational support for his autistic brother.
Although he has spent most of his adult life in parliament, Harris has portrayed himself as an “accidental politician.”
His online presence prompted one opponent in the Oireachtas to dub Harris the “TikTok taoiseach”.
While the economy grew strongly under Varadkar, successive governments, of which Harris was a part, have struggled to tackle the decade-long housing crisis and, more recently, the pressures of record numbers of asylum seekers and refugees.
Inheriting a three-party coalition government that operates according to an agreed policy program will not give the new leader much room for major new policy initiatives.
Before Harris, Varadkar was the country’s youngest ever leader when he was first elected at the age of 38, as well as Ireland’s first openly gay prime minister.
His mother is Irish and his father is Indian, which also made Varadkar Ireland’s first biracial taoiseach.
Varadkar, 45, has had two spells as taoiseach – between 2017 and 2020, and again since December 2022 as part of a job-sharing deal with Michel Martin, head of coalition partner Fianna Fail.
