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Also Known As Leo Eric Varadkar, Varadkar
TaoiseachRepublic of Ireland
Leo Eric Varadkar is an Irish politician who has served as Taoiseach since December 2022, and previously from 2017 to 2020. He served as Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment from June 2020 to December 2022. He has been Leader of Fine Gael since June 2017, and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin West constituency since 2007. He previously served under Taoiseach Enda Kenny as Minister for Social Protection from 2016 to 2017, Minister for Health from 2014 to 2016 and Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport from 2011 to 2014.
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 of Fingal. He was elected to Dáil Éireann for the first time in 2007. During the campaign for the 2015 same-sex marriage referendum, Varadkar came out as gay, becoming the first serving Irish minister to do so.
In May 2017, Taoiseach Enda 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 Fine Gael members of the Oireachtas, and was elected leader on 2 June. Twelve days later, he was appointed Taoiseach, and at 38 years of age became the youngest person to hold the office. He is Ireland's first, and the world's fifth, openly gay head of government and the first Taoiseach to be from an ethnic minority in Ireland.
In 2020, Varadkar called a general election held in February. While polls in 2019 had suggested a favourable result for Fine Gael, they ultimately came third in terms of seats and votes, behind Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, with 35 seats, a loss of 15 seats for the party from the previous general election, when it had come in first position. As part of an agreement to form a three-party coalition along with Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, Varadkar resigned as Taoiseach and was succeeded by Micheál Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil. Varadkar was subsequently appointed Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Per the same agreement, Varadkar returned as Taoiseach in December 2022, with Martin being appointed Tánaiste.
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. His mother, born in Dungarvan, County Waterford, met her future husband while working as a nurse in Slough. Early in 1971, they married in the UK. Sophia, the elder of his two sisters, was born while the family lived in Leicester. They moved to India, before settling in Dublin in 1973, where his other sister, Sonia, was born.
Varadkar was educated at the St Francis Xavier national school in Blanchardstown and then The King's Hospital, a Church of Ireland secondary school in Palmerstown. At the age of 16, he joined Young Fine Gael. He was admitted to Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he briefly read law before switching to its School of 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. Varadkar was selected for the Washington Ireland Program for Service and Leadership (WIP), a half-year personal and professional development program in Washington, D.C., for students from Ireland. While there, he interned for the US House of Representatives.
He graduated in 2003, after completing his internship at KEM Hospital in Mumbai. He then spent several years working as a non-consultant hospital doctor in St. James's Hospital and Connolly Hospital, before specialising as a general practitioner in 2010.
