Paschal Donohoe‘s departure from Irish politics for a post at the World Bank has led to a Cabinet reshuffle.
Here are the new appointees:
Simon Harris: Minister for Finance
Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris, who has never served as an Opposition TD, has enjoyed a charmed political career that has seen him speed through the ranks from the backbenches to the most high-profile cabinet portfolios in under 14 years.
First elected as a TD in 2011, Harris spent three years on the Fine Gael backbenches before being promoted to a minister of state at the Department of Finance in 2014 where he was responsible for the Office of Public Works.
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Before his promotion, he had cut his teeth as a member of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), where he developed a reputation as a “fiscal hawk”. In one infamous PAC meeting scrutinising health budget overruns, tensions ran high and Harris appealed for people to “chillax”.
Now that he is taking over as Minister for Finance, some in Leinster House on Tuesday were pointing out Harris’s lack of a track record in the so-called “money minister” departments. But the same charge was made against Harris when he was appointed to the cabinet as minister for health in 2016. The shock promotion of the then 29-year-old prompted concerns about his lack of experience in that portfolio. His predecessors had been two qualified doctors – James Reilly and Leo Varadkar.
He somehow managed to avoid being damaged by the scandals that dog the Department of Health, but an unkept promise in 2017 that no child would wait longer than four months for scoliosis surgery continues to haunt him. Harris successfully used his following stint in the Department of Further and Higher Education from 2020 on to travel around the country and prepare for his successful leadership bid, which followed the surprise resignation of then taoiseach Leo Varadkar last year. Harris was elected taoiseach after winning the Fine Gael leadership. After the 2024 general election, he became Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade – a high-profile portfolio that included responsibility for the Occupied Territories Bill and the fallout from the threat of US tariffs.
Helen McEntee: Minister for Foreign Affairs
Helen McEntee, the deputy leader of Fine Gael, has now set a record as the first woman to serve as the Minister responsible for both foreign affairs and defence. It’s the second record she has set as a woman politician, after she became the first minister in the history of the State to take maternity leave while serving in the Department of Justice in 2021.
McEntee was first elected as a TD in 2013, in a byelection which followed the death of her father, Shane McEntee. She was first promoted to a junior minister role after the 2016 general election, when she became a minister of state at the Department of Health with responsibility for mental health.
But it was when she switched to a junior minister role for European affairs from 2017 to 2020 that she started to impress colleagues. McEntee was promoted to a cabinet minister in the Department of Justice after the 2020 general election. She had a mixed record in the department; she was criticised for her handling of immigration and the Dublin riots, but regarded as being an important reformer in the area of domestic and sexual violence.
Having only served in the Department of Education for under a year, she did not get much time to set her own agenda. However, she did seek to use her time in the department to put a greater focus on special education.
Hildegarde Naughton: Minister for Education
As a super junior minister, Hildegarde Naughton did attend Cabinet meetings but has now been promoted for the first time to a senior ministry. Since the formation of the new Government she had been serving in the difficult portfolio of minister of state with responsibility for disability – one of the most important social and political issues affecting the country after housing.
Naughton entered national politics when she was appointed to the Seanad by Enda Kenny in 2013, following the resignation of Martin McAleese. She then won a seat in the 2016 general election in Galway West and again in the 2020 general election. As a backbencher, she attracted controversy when she was forced to step aside from a Dáil investigation into the practice of TDs voting for absent colleagues, after it emerged she had engaged in the practice herself.
She was promoted to minister of state at the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport in 2020, and in late 2022 she became government chief whip while also taking on responsibilities as a junior minister at the Department of Health. As the outgoing chief whip earlier this year, one of her last duties was trying to manage the chaos of the speaking rights row which delayed the nomination of a new taoiseach and cabinet.
Emer Higgins: Minister of State for Disability
(a “super junior” role with seat at Cabinet)
Like Harris, one of Emer Higgins’s first roles was working for former tánaiste and Fine Gael TD Frances Fitzgerald while she was in the Seanad. In fact, in 2020 it was reported by the Irish Daily Mail that a “political blind date” in the Dáil bar with the future Fine Gael leader led to her job-sharing the FitzGerald role with Harris and joining the party.
She went on to work for Fitzgerald after the 2011 election, including managing communications on the children’s referendum which Fitzgerald led from her new cabinet role as minister for children. During the same year, she was co-opted on to South Dublin County Council in 2011, replacing Derek Keating, who had been elected in the Fine Gael surge in that year’s general election.
In 2014, she wrote to constituents expressing her delight that a proposed Traveller accommodation scheme would not go ahead in her constituency, which she later apologised for. Initially active in politics through the students’ union in University College Dublin, she successfully held her seat in the 2014 and 2019 local elections. She was elected to the Dáil in 2020 and was elevated to the ranks of junior minister in 2024 after Harris was installed as leader. She took on responsibility for business, employment and retail at the Department of Enterprise.
Last summer she intervened in a plan to overhaul traffic management in Dublin – seeking a delay to the changes over concerns they could negatively impact jobs and retail sales in the city centre. She was accused by Labour leader Ivana Bacik of “dogwhistling” in a bid to “derail” the plan.
After the general election, she was appointed as a junior minister in the Department of Public Expenditure, with special responsibility for public procurement, digitalisation and e-government. She previously worked as a chief of staff of global operations with tech company PayPal.
Frank Feighan: Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure
Frank Feighan (63) has been involved in politics for more than a quarter of a century, and was first elected to Roscommon County Council in 1999. He grew up in Boyle, Co Roscommon above his family’s newsagents. He served in the Seanad between 2002 and 2007, and was elected as a TD for the Roscommon–South Leitrim constituency in 2007 and 2011.
Feighan suffered a significant local backlash in 2011 when he stood by the Fine Gael-led government’s decision to close the emergency department in Roscommon hospital.
He decided not to contest the 2016 general election for Fine Gael, certain that he would lose his seat over the hospital controversy. But he was returned to the Oireachtas in 2016 when he was appointed to the Seanad by then taoiseach Enda Kenny. That same year, he attracted some controversy when he told the Seanad that he believed Ireland should consider rejoining the Commonwealth.
He has lived in Sligo for over a decade with his wife Elaine. They met in 2012 when she asked the TD to help save St Angela’s college, where she worked, from closure. They married in 2018 and have two young children, Francesa and Macdara.
In 2020 he was elected as a TD for Sligo-Leitrim. He was appointed as minister of state at the Department of Health that year, but was dropped as a junior minister in a 2022 reshuffle. He topped the poll in the 2024 general election and again became a junior minister in the Department of Health.
