Leo Eric Varadkar ( ; born 18 January 1979) is an Irish former Fine Gael politician who served as Taoiseach from 2017 to 2020 and from 2022 to 2024, as Tánaiste from 2020 to 2022, and as leader of Fine Gael from 2017 to 2024. A TD for the Dublin West constituency from 2007 to 2024, he held a range of other ministerial positions from 2011 to 2024. Described as centre-right economically, he advocated free markets, lower taxes, and welfare reform. On social issues, he supported successful constitutional referendums to legalise same-sex marriage and to liberalise Ireland's abortion laws.
Born in Dublin, Varadkar is the third child and first son in his multiracial family. His father Ashok is a doctor who was born and raised in Mumbai, India. His mother Miriam grew up on a farm in Dungarvan, County Waterford.
Varadkar studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and worked as a non-consultant hospital doctor and general practitioner. A member of Fine Gael since his teenage years, he ran unsuccessfully in the 1999 local elections but was co-opted onto Fingal County Council in 2003.
He was elected to the council in the 2004 local elections, attaining the highest number of first-preference votes of any candidate in the country. First elected to Dáil Éireann in the 2007 general election, he was appointed to the cabinet of Taoiseach Enda Kenny following the 2011 general election, which saw Fine Gael return to government after 14 years in opposition. He served as Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport from 2011 to 2014, Minister for Health from 2014 to 2016, and Minister for Social Protection from 2016 to 2017. During the campaign for the 2015 same-sex marriage referendum, he came out as gay, the first serving Irish minister to do so.
Following Kenny's resignation, Varadkar defeated Simon Coveney in the 2017 Fine Gael leadership election and was appointed Taoiseach on 14 June 2017. Aged 38, he was at that time the youngest Taoiseach in the history of the state. He became the first Taoiseach from an ethnic minority group, as well as Ireland's first, and the world's fifth, openly gay head of government. He led Fine Gael into the 2020 general election, in which the party won 35 seats, a loss of 15 seats since the 2016 general election. After lengthy negotiations, Fine Gael formed a three-party coalition government with Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, with the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael party leaders rotating the offices of Taoiseach and Tánaiste.
Varadkar served as Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment from June 2020 to December 2022, when he exchanged positions with Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin to begin his second term as Taoiseach. Citing personal and political reasons, he resigned as Fine Gael leader on 20 March 2024 and resigned as Taoiseach on 8 April; he was succeeded by Simon Harris. After deciding not to contest the 2024 general election, he retired from public life in November 2024. In April 2025, he took up a position as global advisor at Penta Group, a public-relations firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. In September 2025, he published his autobiography, Speaking My Mind.
Early life Born on 18 January 1979, in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, Varadkar is the third child and only son of Ashok and Miriam () Varadkar. His father was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, to work as a doctor. His mother, born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, met her future husband while working as a nurse in Slough. Early in 1971, they married in the UK. Sophia, the elder of his two sisters, was born while the family lived in Leicester. They moved to India, before settling in Dublin in 1973, where his other sister, Sonia, was born.
Varadkar was educated at the St Francis Xavier national school in Blanchardstown and then The King's Hospital, a Church of Ireland secondary school in Palmerstown. At the age of 16, he joined Young Fine Gael. He was admitted to Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he briefly studied law before switching to its School of Medicine. At TCD, he was active in the university's Young Fine Gael branch and served as vice-president of the Youth of the European People's Party, the youth wing of the European People's Party, of which Fine Gael is a member. Varadkar was selected for the Washington-Ireland Program, a half-year personal and professional development program in Washington, D.C., for students from Ireland. While there, he interned for the US House of Representatives.
Varadkar graduated in 2003, after completing his internship at KEM Hospital in Mumbai. He then spent several years working as a non-consultant hospital doctor in St. James's Hospital and Connolly Hospital, before specialising as a general practitioner in 2010.
Early political career Fingal County Council (2003–2007) Varadkar was twenty years old and a second-year medical student when he unsuccessfully contested the 1999 local elections in the Mulhuddart local electoral area. Varadkar was co-opted to Fingal County Council in 2003, for the Castleknock local electoral area, as a replacement for Sheila Terry. At the 2004 local elections, he received the highest first-preference vote in the country with 4,894 votes and was elected on the first count.
Dáil Éireann (2007–2011) Varadkar was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 2007 general election as a Fine Gael TD for the Dublin West constituency. After the 2007 general election, then Leader of the Opposition, Enda Kenny, appointed him to the front bench as spokesperson for Enterprise, Trade and Employment until a 2010 reshuffle, when he became spokesperson on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. It was also during 2010 that Varadkar was reported to be a supporter of an attempt to oust Enda Kenny as leader of Fine Gael and replace him with Richard Bruton. The heave was not successful, but in the aftermath, Varadkar was able to repair his relationship with Kenny. At the 2011 general election, Varadkar was re-elected to the Dáil, with 8,359 first-preference votes (19.7%).
Government minister (2011–2017) Minister for Transport, Tourism, and Sport (2011–2014) When Fine Gael formed a coalition government with the Labour Party, Varadkar was appointed Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport on 9 March 2011. This appointment was considered a surprise, as Varadkar was not known as a sports lover. He said that while he knew "a lot of facts... I don't play the sports."
In May 2011, Varadkar suggested Ireland was "very unlikely" to resume borrowing in 2012 and might need a second bailout, causing jitters on international markets about Ireland's credibility. Many of his cabinet colleagues frowned on Varadkar's forthrightness, as did the European Central Bank. Taoiseach Enda Kenny repeated the line of the Government of Ireland, that the State would not require a further bailout from the European Union or the International Monetary Fund, and said he had warned all ministers against publicly disparaging the economy. Varadkar said that reaction to the story was hyped up but that he was not misquoted. The Evening Herald repeatedly described Varadkar as gaffe-prone.
Minister for Health (2014–2016)
In the cabinet reshuffle of July 2014, Varadkar replaced James Reilly as Minister for Health.
Varadkar was returned to the Dáil at the 2016 general election. He retained the health portfolio in an acting capacity until May of that year, due to the delay in government formation. In one of his final acts as Minister for Health, Varadkar cut €12million from the €35million allocated to that year's budget for mental health care, telling the Dáil that the cuts were "necessary as the funding could be better used elsewhere."
Minister for Social Protection (2016–2017) On 6 May 2016, after government formation talks had concluded, Taoiseach Enda Kenny appointed Varadkar as Minister for Social Protection. During his time in the ministry, he launched a controversial campaign against welfare fraud called "Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All. It was labelled a "hate campaign" by a former social welfare inspector, who claimed the campaign was "all about [Varadkar's] aspirations to be leader".
First term as Taoiseach (2017–2020) 2017
On 2 June 2017, Varadkar was elected leader of Fine Gael, defeating Simon Coveney. Although Coveney had the support of more Fine Gael members than Varadkar, the electoral college system more strongly weighted the votes of the party's parliamentarians, with these strongly backing Varadkar.
Like Enda Kenny's second term, Varadkar relied upon the support of Independents and the abstention of Fianna Fáil TDs to support his bid for Taoiseach. On 14 June 2017, he was elected as Taoiseach in a 57–50 vote with 47 abstentions. He became Ireland's first openly gay Taoiseach, as well as the youngest; however, he is not the youngest head of an Irish government, as both Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins were younger on assuming their respective offices in revolutionary governments prior to the establishment of the state. He is also the first head of government who is of half-Indian descent. It was also the first time that one Fine Gael Taoiseach was succeeded by another.
One of Varadkar's first acts as Taoiseach was to announce a referendum on abortion for 2018. He said that the government would also lay out a road map for achieving a low-carbon economy.
His government nearly collapsed as a result of the Garda whistleblower scandal and Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Frances Fitzgerald's role in it. Fianna Fáil, the main opposition party, who were in a confidence-and-supply agreement with Fine Gael, threatened a motion of no confidence in the government. After days of gridlock, the crisis was averted, after Fitzgerald resigned from the cabinet to prevent triggering an election that could jeopardise the Irish position in Brexit negotiations. Shortly after this, Varadkar appointed former leadership rival and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Simon Coveney as Tánaiste, Heather Humphreys as Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation and Josepha Madigan as Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, in a small reshuffle of the cabinet.
Shortly after the Fitzgerald crisis, an impasse was reached in the Brexit talks, as Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, objected to a deal agreed to by Varadkar, British Prime Minister Theresa May, and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker. This prevented an agreement from being reached as the deadline approached. Varadkar stated he was "surprised and disappointed" the UK could not reach a deal. Later in the week, a consensus deal was finalised. Varadkar stated he had received guarantees from the UK there would be no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. He later said he and his cabinet had "achieved all we set out to achieve" during the talks before quoting former British prime minister Winston Churchill, by saying "This is not the end but it is the end of the beginning". An Irish Times poll taken during these days showed Varadkar with a 53% approval rating, the highest for any Taoiseach since 2011, and showed Fine Gael with an eleven-point lead over Fianna Fáil. Government satisfaction was also at 41%, the highest in almost 10 years. Irish Times columnist Pat Leahy claimed Varadkar had ended 2017 "on a high" and IrishCentral called it the Taoiseach's "finest hour".
2018 In January 2018, his opinion poll approval ratings reached 60%, a ten-year high for any Taoiseach.