Simon Harris has been approved by the Irish parliament as the country’s next leader and will become the youngest premier in the nation’s history.
Ireland’s Dail, parliament’s lower house, voted to approve the 37-year-old as their next taoiseach following the shock resignation of Leo Varadkar last month.
Mr Varadkar, 45, tendered his official resignation to President Michael D Higgins in Dublin on Monday evening after saying his reasons for stepping down were “both personal and political”.
Mr Harris was the only candidate to put his name forward in the Fine Gael leadership contest.
The prime minister-elect will travel to see the president this afternoon to be formally installed.
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Mr Harris will be heading a coalition government with his Fine Gael party, Fianna Fail and Eamon Ryan’s Green party.
After approval from TDs (members of parliament), Mr Harris, from Greystones in County Wicklow, will be handling a reshuffle of Fine Gael ministers, including which of his colleagues replaces him as minister for further and higher education.
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Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns told TDs on Tuesday her party would not be supporting the nomination as they believed a new government was needed to bring about change in Ireland.
She said: “We are facing serious challenges as a country, and in order to address them we need new ideas. For that we need a new government, so today the Social Democrats will not be supporting his nomination.”
Ms Cairns said “radical change” is needed to tackle crises in housing, health care, disability services, child care and climate action.
“The change that we need cannot be delivered by a taoiseach from the same party, with the same programme for government and the same policies,” she added.
“The issues we face and will continue to face will worsen until we elect a government with a fundamentally new approach.”
