In Ireland, the Taoiseach is the head of government, and this year Simon Harris became the youngest ever Taoiseach, at the age of thirty-seven. Active in politics since he was a teenager, he has promised to prioritise rural interests, small businesses and education in his new role.
early years
Born in the coastal town of Greystones in County Wicklow, Harris is the eldest child of a taxi driver and a special needs assistant. At fifteen, he was inspired by his autistic brother Adam to found an autism support group. He also became a youth member of the liberal-conservative party Fine Gael, meaning ‘Family (or ‘Tribe’) of the Irish’. Fine Gael is now part of a coalition government with two other political parties: the conservative party Fianna Fáil (meaning ‘Soldiers of Destiny’), and the Green Party.
A fast life
After finishing school, Harris began a degree course in journalism and French at Dublin Institute of Technology. However, he left the course in his penultimate year to start a career in politics. At twenty-two, he became a county councillor for Wicklow, and at twenty-four, he was elected to parliament, becoming the youngest MP at the time.
Continuing this trend, Harris became Ireland’s youngest-ever health minister in 2016, and led the country’s initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He later became the Minister for Justice, and then the Minister for Further and Higher Education. “In many ways, my career has been a bit odd…,” he once told the Irish magazine Hot Press. “Life came at me a lot faster than I expected it to.”
The TikTok Taoiseach
After the former Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar resigned in March, Harris immediately became the new leader of the party and, on 9 April, he became the youngest Taoiseach ever. Known as the TikTok Taoiseach, he — like most millennials — is very active on social media. He has over two million likes on TikTok and hundreds of thousands of followers on X and Instagram, and posts almost every day.