Leo Eric Varadkar was Prime Minister of Ireland from 2017-2020 and again from 2022-24. At the time of election, he was Ireland’s youngest ever Taoiseach and the first to be open gay and biracial. He served in government continuously for 13 years in the Ministries of Transport, Tourism & Sport, Enterprise, Trade, Employment, Social Protection and Health.
As Prime Minister, he helped lead Ireland through the COVID pandemic with one of the internationally-recognised best public health and economic responses. He led Ireland through Brexit preventing a hard border between North and South, maintaining Ireland’s place at the heart of the European Union, its single market and upholding the Good Friday Agreement. The Governments he participated in lifted Ireland’s ban on abortion and improved LGBT rights including the introduction of marriage equality, and gender pay gap reporting.
A strong supporter of Irish unification, he allocated billions to North-South projects under the Shared Island Fund and helped to get the power-sharing institutions of the Good Friday Agreement operating again.
He led Ireland into PESCO, the European Union’s structured co-operation on the Defence and Security.
At the time of leaving office, Ireland had record levels of employment and a budget surplus.
He is a life member of Ireland’s Council of State and is a Hauser Leader and Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard. A member of the Global Advisory Board of Penta Group, he writes a column for the Sunday Times Ireland
