Leo Varadkar
Leo Eric Varadkar (/vəˈrædkər/ və-RAD-kər; born 18 January 1979) is an Irish Fine Gael politician and physician. He has served as the Leader of Fine Gael, and as Taoiseach and Minister for Defence in the Government of Ireland, since June 2017. Following the 2020 Irish general election in which Fine Gael were returned as the third largest party behind Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, Varadkar resigned but remains in office as caretaker Taoiseach until a successor is appointed. He has also been a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin West constituency since 2007.
Varadkar was born in Dublin and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin. He spent several years as a non-consultant hospital doctor, eventually qualifying as a general practitioner in 2010. In 2004, he joined Fine Gael and became a member of Fingal County Council and later served as Deputy Mayor. He was elected to Dáil Éireann for the first time in 2007.
He later served in the Kenny Government, 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.[1]
During the 2015 same-sex marriage referendum, Varadkar came out as gay, becoming the first Irish minister to do so.[2]
In May 2017, Kenny announced that he would resign as Taoiseach and Fine Gael Leader. Varadkar stood in the leadership election to replace him; although more party members voted for his opponent, Simon Coveney, he won by a significant margin among members of the Oireachtas, and was elected leader on 2 June. 12 days later, he was appointed Taoiseach, and at 38 years old became the youngest person to hold the office.[3] He is Ireland's first, and the world's fourth, openly gay head of government in modern times,[4] and first Taoiseach of Indian heritage. The Economist says of him: "Not since the days of Éamon de Valera has Ireland had a leader as globally recognisable as Leo Varadkar.
Born on 18 January 1979, in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, Varadkar is the third child and only son of Ashok and Miriam (née Howell) Varadkar. His father was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, to work as a doctor.[6] His mother, born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, met her future husband while working as a nurse in Slough.[7] They married in the UK, early in 1971,[8] then lived in Leicester, where the eldest of their three children, Sophie, was born. The family moved to India, before settling in Dublin in 1973, where their second child, Sonia, was born.
Though Varadkar was born to a Hindu father and a Catholic mother, his parents made the decision to raise him in the Catholic faith.[9] He was educated at the St Francis Xavier National School, Blanchardstown. His second-level education took place at The King's Hospital in Palmerstown, a boarding school run by the Church of Ireland.
During his secondary schooling, he joined Young Fine Gael. He was admitted to Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he briefly studied law. He later switched to 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.[10] Varadkar was selected for the Washington Ireland Program for Service and Leadership (WIP), a prestigious half-year personal and professional development program in Washington, D.C., for students from Ireland.[11]
He graduated from the School of Medicine (Trinity College Dublin) in 2003, after he completed his internship at KEM Hospital in Mumbai.[12] He then spent several years working as a junior doctor in St. James's Hospital and Connolly Hospital, before qualifying as a general practitioner in 2010.
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