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This post was first published on 19 May. It has been republished – with minor edits – on the occasion of Leo Varadkar’s election as the new leader of Fine Gael on 2 June 2017.
IT SEEMS AS though Leo Varadkar was destined to work in medicine.
His mother Miriam, from Dungarvan in Waterford, was working as a nurse in England when she met his Mumbai-born father Ashok, a doctor.
The pair had settled in Dublin before Leo, the youngest of three children, was born in 1979.
Varadkar attended St Francis Xavier National School and The King’s Hospital in Dublin, before studying medicine at Trinity College and qualifying as a GP.
Destined to be a doctor perhaps, but is he also destined to be Taoiseach?
Varadkar was an active Young Fine Gael member in college, serving as chair of the Youth of the European People’s Party (of which Fine Gael is a member in the European Parliament) at one point.
His rise through the ranks of Fine Gael was relatively swift.
The then-medical student contested the local elections in 1999 in the Mulhuddart area of Dublin. He failed to be elected but was co-opted to Fingal County Council for the Castleknock area in 2003, serving as deputy mayor.
In 2004, he received the highest first-preference vote in the country in the local elections, getting almost 5,000 votes on the first count.
After securing a Dáil seat in the Dublin West constituency in the 2007 general election, he became the party’s spokesperson for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
‘You know where you stand with him’
Fine Gael councillor and current deputy mayor of Fingal County Council Eithne Loftus told TheJournal.ie she’s “not surprised” by how quickly Varadkar has risen through the ranks of the party.
I knew the first day he ran for party, the day he was elected. I knew and I said it at the time. I was the chair of the constituency at the time and introduced him as our future leader.
“I’m not at all surprised, he’s a very, very smart man. The country needs someone of his stature to lead.
“I have watched him grow since he became our local representative here and have seen his ability and general concern for the job that he does.
“I’ve nothing against Simon Coveney, we are very lucky to have so many people who are capable of doing the job of leader, but on this occasion I think Leo is the better option.”
Fond of speaking his mind, a somewhat rare trait in Irish politics, Varadkar is never far from the headlines. Some view his straight talking as refreshing, but others think it’s his Achilles’ heel – something prone to landing him in hot water.
Despite her praise for Varadkar, Loftus admits they haven’t always seen eye to eye.
“We would have disagreed on numerous things but certainly you knew exactly where you stood with him. I prefer someone to give me the truth and speak his mind.”
The failed heave
One of the notable times Varadkar spoke his mind was when he was on the wrong side of a failed heave against Enda Kenny as Fine Gael leader in 2010.
During a Prime Time interview at the time, Varadkar explained why he was backing Richard Bruton over Kenny. He drew inspiration for his answer from a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign ad in 2008.
Varadkar said Kenny had built up the party “brilliantly” over the previous eight years.
However, the then Enterprise Spokesperson said the second thing the leader of the Opposition has to do is “convince the people that he can serve as their Taoiseach”.
“Unfortunately, over the last eight years, and it’s not just one opinion poll, Enda Kenny hasn’t been able to do that. And it’s not that I’ve lost confidence in him, it’s that the public doesn’t have confidence in him. And unfortunately that’s the truth and it’s something that we all know, it’s something that you know.
And I had to ask myself that key question, the 3am question is that if we’re in government and if there’s a national crisis and if there’s a sovereign debt crisis for example and [then Central Bank governor] Patrick Honohan lifts up the phone at 3am and rings the Taoiseach, who do I want to answer that phone?
Despite backing Bruton, Varadkar was one of those not cast aside from the front bench when Kenny, now Fine Gael’s longest-serving Taoiseach, fought off the heave.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie previously about that period, Varadkar’s fellow rebel MEP Brian Hayes said: “Leo [Varadkar] had done his own sort of polling in his constituency … He said he was absolutely certain that Kenny should go but was not certain – and he pointed at Richard [Bruton] – ‘that you’re the solution’. I thought it was brilliant.
“Richard kind of blushed and said: ‘Sure that’s it, but it’s me or nothing.’”
When Kenny appointed a new frontbench the following month some of the rebels were saved but given different portfolios, including Varadakar and Simon Coveney (now the Housing Minister and his rival for the top job).
Back in 2015, Fine Gael’s former Director of Organisations and Strategy Frank Flannery told this publication: “Guys like Leo and Simon were kept on. These were very key events and allowed the party to move on as if it hadn’t happened.”
‘Poison chalice’
When Fine Gael formed a coalition government with Labour in 2011, Varadkar was appointed Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport.
A Cabinet reshuffle in 2014 saw him moved to the Department of Health, perhaps a role more suited to the doctor.
However, health is often dubbed the most difficult seat at the Cabinet table – given the constant battle with waiting lists, hospital trolleys and lack of resources.
Brian Cowen, himself a former Taoiseach, who served as Health Minister as part of Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Fáil government in the late 1990s famously compared the portfolio to Angola, in terms of how many ‘bombs’ one has to defuse no bombs when at the helm.
Speaking about the appointment at the time, Varadkar himself said: “I’m not sure if I’m able to turn the poison chalice into sweet wine, but I’ll do all that I can to improve our health services.”
In the end, he only served as Health Minister for 22 months – a relatively short period in such a vast portfolio.
As the Oireachtas is currently looking to develop a 10-year plan for the health service, Varadkar’s stint seems a bit ‘blink and you’ll have missed it’. His appointment to the Department of Social Protection (DSP) last year was seen as a lateral move by many, including Varadkar himself.
Speaking on RTÉ radio in 2016, he said: “I’m in some way sorry to be leaving Health.
It was a really tough department, probably the toughest in government, but it is one where you can make an important impact.
He said his redeployment to the DSP wasn’t a demotion, but “may well be a sideways move”.
The department’s ongoing ‘Welfare Cheats Cheat Us All’ campaign, which encourages people to report others who they suspect of committing social welfare fraud, has been making headlines recently.
Measures in the new Social Welfare Bill include the quarterly publication of the names, addresses and penalties incurred by people convicted of welfare fraud, and the potential to reduce the amount a person can receive in social welfare benefits if they’ve been convicted of fraud.
The move was welcomed by some but others were critical. Bernadette Gorman, a former social welfare inspector, described it as “a hate campaign”.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Seán O’Rourke this week, Gorman, who has been involved with the DSP for 30 years said: “I don’t like where the department is going. I do think Leo Varadkar was on some sort of solo run but I don’t know what his officials were doing allowing it.”
Gorman said, from her experience investigating welfare claims, “complex human stories” rather than conscious fraud are often behind welfare rules being broken. She added that she believes the plan is “all about his own bid to become leader [of Fine Gael]“.
Fianna Fáil’s Willie O’Dea said the campaign is “both a gross misrepresentation of the actual levels of fraud perpetrated against his department and an attempt to curry favour with significant right wing element of the Fine Gael organisation”, comparing Varadkar to Margaret Thatcher.
Varadkar has said the new rules will act as a deterrent to crack down on welfare fraud.
When announcing the campaign in April, he said:
We take fraud very seriously and have a responsibility to taxpayers to ensure that people receive what they are entitled to. Nothing upsets people more than someone else cheating the system at their expense.
Reports of suspected fraud have increased significantly since the campaign was launched. However, there have only been 11 cases of suspected fraud so far this year, according to the department’s own figures.
Last year, the DSP made €41 million in overpayments due to customer fraud in 16,225 cases – a decline on the €49 million paid out in 2015 in 21,407 cases of customer fraud.
When Varadkar spoke about seeking to revamp the country’s social welfare system when appointed minister, people saw that as him throwing his hat into the leadership ring.
At the time, Varadkar said he was “waiting on the day I sit on toilet and someone says it’s part of a leadership strategy”.
*That* interview
For a person not afraid to talk on most topics, Varadkar was – like most Irish politicians – reticent to talk about his personal life.
It made an interview with Miriam O’Callaghan on RTÉ Radio 1 in January 2015 all the more noteworthy.
On that morning, he publicly came out as gay.
He said part of the reason to go public was his new role as Health Minister, as issues such as surrogacy and the ban on gay or bisexual men donating blood now came under his remit.
“I just want people to know that, whatever decisions are made on any issue, I’ll make them according to what I believe is in the public interest and my own conscience. I won’t be allowing my own background or my own sexual orientation to dictate the decisions that I make,” he told O’Callaghan.
Undeniably, the announcement was significant. It took place four months before the referendum on marriage equality – which, of course, passed – and made Varadkar one of a few openly gay members of the Oireachtas.
No, a person’s sexual orientation does not impact on their ability to do a job, but having an openly gay leader of the country would show far Ireland has come in the two decades since homosexuality was decriminalised here.
To some, there was another part of the interview that was more surprising than him coming out. Miriam Lord noted in the Irish Times that Varadkar “shocked the political establishment by telling RTÉ’s Miriam O’Callaghan that ‘a politician should trust people with the truth’. Then he shocked the nation by revealing that he is still only 36 years old.”
Indeed, his quick rise through the ranks of Fine Gael means he’s younger than many of his peers at the Cabinet table.
All to play for
Opinion polls – although we’ve learned they can’t always be trusted – generally gave Varadkar the edge over Coveney very early in the leadership race.
Today, the final results showed Coveney won the backing of 65% of Fine Gael’s grassroots members, but Varadkar took the victory after securing significant support among local representatives and the parliamentary party.
The final count, including all three electoral colleges, saw him win with 60% to Coveney’s 40%. The electoral college breakdown was as follows:
Fine Gael’s parliamentary party consists of 50 TDs, 19 senators and four MEPs.
How they voted in the leadership contest accounted for 65% of the outcome, while the votes of ordinary members made up 25% and councillors’ votes just 10%.
‘Who wants to lead the Opposition?’
When asked by TheJournal.ie in January 2015 if he wanted to lead Fine Gael, Varadkar, who had just been appointed Health Minister, said he didn’t know.
“Ask me that maybe in four or five years time. Now, at the moment, absolutely, definitely not … It’s the last thing on my mind at the moment, particularly with the job I have at the moment, trying to get a handle on the health service. I really want to get stuck into that.
In four or five years time, if I’m still around, ask me that question and I’ll give you a straight answer at that time.
It’s only been two years, but he has just given his first speech and press conference as Fine Gael leader, nodding to the fact that he is soon to become Taoiseach.
“When my father travelled [to Ireland]… I doubt he ever dreamed that his son would one day grow up to become its leader and despite his differences, his son would be treated the same and judged by his actions and character, and not by his ardents and identity,” he said.
The 38-year-old earlier said that people around the world look to Ireland and are reminded that this isn’t a country where it matters where you come from, “but rather where you want to go”.
However, he may not have a lot of time to get comfortable in this new top spot. A general election could happen sooner rather than later and could see Fine Gael return to the opposition benches.
During the same interview with TheJournal.ie in 2015, Varadkar was asked if he wanted to be Taoiseach. His response? “You’d hardly want to be leader of the opposition. Who would want to do that?”
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I wonder why….nobody was allowed to have any other medical problem but Covid, I work in a hospital and they were nowhere near full capacity, none of them, public or private, and what on earth was the thinking behind stopping screening, bizarre.
@Jun Stone: A scandal of epic proportions.
@Jun Stone: the state of the health service in this country. We really need to get on top of this. It should our number 1 priority as a nation
@Jun Stone: two of my friends both had minor surgery recently without any problems. One was two weeks ago and the other was a month ago. They were ongoing issues causing discomfort but needed to be done. In the past they had been cancelled, as in last year, I must say I was shocked to hear they got them done while all I see are articles like this during covid. Are they just not, or were they just not preforming more serious surgeries /appointments etc?
@Jun Stone: If you work in a hospital then you should be more than aware that patients were admitted, patients were examined, fully investigated, scanned with CT and MRI, reviewed by multiple teams, received chemo/radiotherapy and operated on during lockdown. You may not have worked 24+ hour shifts during lockdown but I and my colleagues did.
@Philip Kavanagh: and many more (including myself) had follow up cancer scans cancelled. I had two appointments in two separate Dublin hospitals cancelled during the lockdown. One has been rescheduled so far
@Jun Stone: couldn’t agree more. Frankly, having looked at the IFR as things become more clear through proper testing, covid-19 seems to be not as infectious as we initially feared. Even the CDC in the US have released similar findings. I was actually in A&E in April in Castlebar and found that I was brought into the covid-19 triage setting despite having not had covid symptoms – I had chest pain suspected to be linked to heart issues which thankfully was found to be a bacterial infection. I also saw old people brought into the same ward even though they hadn’t been confirmed to have covid-19. So my opinion is if that practise is common to other hospitals then many cases were likely transmitted in the hospital. My great aunt has now fallen ill with a stroke as her routine check ups since her stent placement have ceased. My grandmother who has heart problems has also had her quarterly check ups cancelled indefinitely. All in all, in my circles I have seen lockdown cause more damage than covid-19. My mother had covid-19 in March and was sick with a bad chest infection for about 3 weeks but recovered with steroids. In fact, that’s what most people I know who’ve had say they have had. About 5 years ago I was out of work for 2 weeks and totally bed ridden with viral bronchitis, so I’m not really sure what to believe. I agree we should take measures but I’m not so sure lockdown is in the best interest of total public health in all its facets. I know people have used Sweden as an example but the deaths per million are more or less the same as Denmark. Anyway, let’s look after the vulnerable, and not forget that people with other diseases which need attention are also vulnerable!
@Anna: I’m not and cannot comment on individual cases. @Jun Stone claims that non-Covid patients were ignored or sacrificed on the altar of Coronavirus. I am saying from first hand experience that her comment is a lie designed only for click-bait. I would be very interested to know what hospital she works in and what her exact role entails. Her comment also implies that the hospitals (and therefore their staff) were doing half-nothing during the lockdown. Again so far off the mark, she clearly doesn’t know what she’s commenting on.
@Philip Kavanagh: and many had their vital routine follow ups cancelled . Two in my house included. Do not minimise that because it’s very serious . Simple but vital echocardiograms are cancelled , stress tests cancelled , all bowel cancer follow ups & screenings are cancelled. Breast check cancelled , need I continue ? Chemotherapy is not cancelled thankfully or aa&E but that’s about it in public hospitals .
@Laurel Didn’t: Did you treat Covid patients? Did you make the decision to put them on Airvo or bipap or just intubate them? Did you prone them? Did you send them for CTPA because you had a gut feeling that they had lung clots? Have you spent the last month calling patients who were admitted with Covid (and were lucky to survive) to hear how they are still short of breath, suffer from fatigue, have not gotten their sense of smell back, etc., etc.)? I lived in Sweden, I speak Swedish and I worked in a Swedish hospital. Sweden has had 523.71 deaths per million. Denmark has 103.36 deaths per million. You’re either not good with statistics or you’re just lying.
@Isabel Oliveira: I’m not minimising anything. And I certainly will not be accused of taking missed scans and screening as not being serious. I meet and treat patients everyday. Also believe it or not, frontline workers have health issues and families too. The delays in screening and treatments affect them also. What I said is that the health service did not simply grind to a halt for months. Patients were investigated and treated, and the best was done in an extraordinary situation.
@Sam Glynn: that was the plan, everyone public patient and no electives to be carried out? There may have been some underlying concerns re your friends procedures even though they may appear to have been minor?
@Philip Kavanagh: of course they were! nobody’s implying that nothing happened in hospitals during Covid but where I work and the affiliated public hospital were not operating to capacity and my husband also works in a private hospital, different one to me, and it was also not operating to capacity, maybe different where you work.
@Philip Kavanagh: do not twist what I said I work in a private hospital for a consultant, running clinics and booking procedures and theatre for same…no clinics were run during the Covid pandemic period and only cancer ops were done. The hospital was not full. No routine screening was done . Hope that answers your question. I’m early 60’s and not bothered about ‘clicks’!!!!
@Isabel Oliveira: you know me, I don’t lie…hope your well.
@Jun Stone: So you do admin in a private hospital….You don’t examine, admit, work-up, treat and care for patients. You have no idea what issues patients were presenting with to ED during lockdown. And I am not twisting your words – to quote “nobody was allowed to have any other medical problem but Covid”. Click bait at its most obvious.
@Philip Kavanagh: actually my daughter is a doctor in yet another hospital here in Dublin treating Covid patients. Try not to be so condescending, I may be ‘just admin’ in your opinion but I have first hand knowledge of what actually went on in the hospital I work in as I have been working all through the pandemic.
@Philip Kavanagh: I appreciate your points Philip and I humbly acknowledge that I am not a doctor nor have I treated covid patients. But I did ask the team in Castlebar how busy they were and their response was not full capacity. Where are you getting your info about Sweden? Japan is another example – low deaths. Seasonal influenza causes up to 650,000 deaths per year according to the WHO. Currently we have 560k from covid-19 and given how deaths have been terribly reported perhaps it’s less in reality. Philip we’re not denying that it’s a nasty bug to catch, but given the perspective the aforementioned figures grant, I’m not pro lockdown at all. Re Sweden, I’m comparing Scania with Hovedstaden and Sjealand. Most comparable in terms of locality, demographics etc.
In the VHI or Laya … no problem … you can jump the queue …
If you can pay … get seen today.
If you cant pay .. join the long delay!
Yet EVERY taxpayer pays for the public health service to the tune of €19 Billion a year .It is 11% of GDP .. whereas other countries spend far less at avg of 9% of GDP
What a despicable 2-Tier society is Ireland!
Sign the Petition and demand that this abomination be fixed and fast.
Counting trolleys is a laugh … put a few production engineers in charge of that place and get proper metrics and processes in place … 4 procedues per day v 8 in private hospitals v 16 in other EU countries ….
@Neuville-Kepler62F: Signed and shared.
@Neuville-Kepler62F: It’s not going to happen, the various imbedded unions will stand in the way of any meaningfull progress, it would probably be cheaper if the government paid for all our private health care at this stage. No government over the past 30 years has ever been able to tackle the problems in our health service.
@Alan: but they all said they would.
@Neuville-Kepler62F: Very good comment te how inefficient public hospitals are compared to private ones. We are spending an absolute fortune on healthcare as a country and not getting good value at all. Our doctors and nurses are wonderful. The organisation is a shambles.
@Alan: .. interesting idea. outsource all current public health to private management. Dont limit to Ireland.. look at outsource to other EU countries. Nothing should be discounted at this stage to sort out the sorry mess. – Belfast Bus!
Where is MM now and O Brien his lackey
That figure was already in the hundreds of thousands long before we’d ever even heard of Covid-19. Trying to blame appalling waiting lists on this pandemic is a bit rich, and ignores almost twenty years of similar numbers.
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