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Simon Harris, who can ‘dance to any tune you play’, has long been planning for such an eventuality

Under his watch as minister for health, government was slow to recognise crisis in nursing homes during pandemic

Simon Harris

Further and Higher Education Minister Simon Harris. 'He’s been very attentive to every TD. He has huge energy and huge ambition.'

Marie O'Halloran's face
Marie O'Halloran
Thu Mar 21 2024 - 21:00

It looks like it will be a coronation for Simon Harris to become Fine Gael party leader and taoiseach unless a surprise dark horse enters the political fray before nominations close at 1pm on Monday. And while the suddenness of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s announcement that he was standing down caught everyone by surprise, Harris has long been planning for such an eventuality.

Party colleagues have said he was born ready for the campaign to lead the party – and Government. His bid for the leadership was described as almost a “copycat” of Varadkar’s campaign seven years ago when he had his TDs, Senators and party members lined up to support him from the outset of the contest against rival Simon Coveney.

From early on Thursday morning colleagues and Ministers were keenly proposing, promoting and supporting the Wicklow TD, with almost half the 52 members of the parliamentary party backing him by lunchtime.

There are other similarities. The outgoing Taoiseach was at 38 the youngest TD ever to be elected as party leader and Taoiseach. Harris is a year younger, and was the youngest in the Dáil when first elected in 2011.

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Seen then as one of the party’s brightest and most ambitious prospects and a major Varadkar rival, energetic is one of the key words now peppering the comments of his colleagues, who are hoping he can revive their fortunes after 13 years in three successive governments and concerns about losing seats and a swathe of retiring TDs.

For years he has had an open-door policy for Oireachtas colleagues, councillors and party members. “He’s been very attentive to every TD,” said one. “He has huge energy and huge ambition.”

A colleague has said of him “he’s cute, crafty and very shrewd. He’s got the skills you need to dance at the highest levels of politics and he can dance to any tune you play. You go away happy that he listened to you even if he doesn’t deliver. And he knows everything that’s going on in your constituency. It’s remarkable.”

Irish Times Political Correspondent Cormac McQuinn looks at the career of Simon Harris.

A number of party sources have worried about his ability to deliver. And while he may have blushed at the compliments of the colleagues endorsing him, the criticism from Opposition parties is pointed. Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty at Dáil Leaders’ Questions described him as “a Minister whose record in the Department of Health was so bad that it precipitated the last general election, a man who made false promises to children with scoliosis and their families about when they would get their treatment”.

Harris had already survived a motion of no confidence in February 2019 brought by Sinn Féin over a “lengthy” list of health service problems, but particularly the cost overruns on the yet to be completed national children’s hospital.

In January 2020 he faced another such motion but the Taoiseach decided to instead call an election. And while the new government was being negotiated Harris’s star began to rise again for his communication skills and the health strategy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, that too caused problems for which he apologised, actions that endeared him somewhat to a public weary from restrictions and isolation. In April of 2020 he apologised for an “awful boo-hoo” by incorrectly stating there were 18 other coronaviruses before Covid-19, when it had been named after the year it first occurred. Harris said he can be “an awful old idiot at times”.

The government, under his watch as minister for health, was also very slow to recognise the Covid deaths crisis in nursing homes in the early stages of the pandemic, the sector accounting for most virus deaths. Two of the homes worst hit by the virus, Tara Winthrop in Swords, Co Dublin, and Dealgan House in Dundalk, Co Louth, made desperate appeals for help directly to the minister to deal with the severe outbreaks.

A supportive party colleague says that Harris has now “got a lot of experience” and that while “every politician promises more than they deliver” the Minister has the ideas and the policies and the strategy. “He listens, he has great recall, he’s no slouch and he will run with this opportunity.”

Another colleague described him as “the voice of the next generation” and he communicates with them on an almost daily basis through social media, with a remarkable 234,800 followers on X, formerly Twitter; 169,000 followers on Instagram; and 93,200 followers on TikTok.

It was virtually entirely through social media that he ran his first electoral campaign when he topped the poll for Wicklow County Council in 2009 with the highest percentage vote of any councillor across the State.

He first became interested in politics when he campaigned for autism services for his brother Adam and others in the community with autism, and went on to jointly found the charity As I Am, which his brother now runs.

He moved into the national arena through his role as parliamentary assistant to Frances Fitzgerald during her time as leader of the Seanad before his election in 2011.

His first ministerial role was as minister of state for finance and he has served as minister for health from 2016 until 2020. As minister for health he supported repeal of the Eighth Amendment. He later said his wife Caoimhe was pregnant at the time of the referendum campaign. The couple now have two children – a daughter Saoirse and son Cillian.

Harris also served as minister for justice while his colleague Helen McEntee was on maternity leave. He is the first Minister for Further and Higher Education and while it was seen as a much lower profile brief he managed to keep a high profile for education matters – and for himself.

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