Portrait
Leo Varadkar
Born
18 January 1979Dublin, Ireland
Politician, former Taoiseach of IrelandIreland

Leo Varadkar

Leo Varadkar became Ireland’s first openly gay Taoiseach after speaking publicly about his sexuality during the campaign for marriage equality.

Leo Varadkar was born in Dublin in 1979. The son of an Indian doctor and an Irish nurse, he studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin and worked as a doctor before building his political career in Fine Gael.

Elected to the Dáil in 2007, he entered government in 2011. As health minister, he came out as gay in a national radio interview in January 2015. That May, Irish voters approved marriage equality in a referendum, a campaign in which he participated.

In 2017 Varadkar became Taoiseach at thirty-eight, the youngest person to hold the office and the first who was openly gay or of Indian heritage. His government faced difficult negotiations over Brexit and held the 2018 referendum that removed Ireland’s constitutional restriction on abortion.

He served a second term as Taoiseach from 2022 to 2024. In March 2024 he announced his departure as party leader and head of government, formally leaving the premiership in April. He did not stand in the general election later that year.

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