Leo Varadkar in power: Five highs and five lows through Covid, a housing crisis and Brexit

As Covid-19 spread, Varadkar was in the US on St Patrick’s Day duties when he announced Ireland would be entering its first lockdown. He asked people to “make enormous sacrifices”, saying many lives could be saved. He said that while the economy would suffer, it would bounce back, people’s lives would return to normal and “we will prevail”. Varadkar, leader of what was then a caretaker government, make similar speeches to a frightened population during the pandemic.

The following year, he tied himself up in knots when he revealed during a US trip that he had contacted Clare County Council over a proposed wind farm near the then US president Donald Trump’s Doonbeg golf course following a call from Trump himself when Varadkar was minister for tourism. That year, he wrote to pop star Kylie Minogue to ask if he could welcome her to Ireland personally when she was travelling to Dublin for a concert.

In 2023, Varadkar apologised for an “ill-judged” joke about interns in Washington at a function in the US capital. He quipped he was an intern in the city in the last year of Bill Clinton’s presidency “when some parents would have had cause for concern about what would happen to interns in Washington”.

There were red faces in the Varadkar household last year when the Taoiseach’s partner Matt Barrett had to apologise for lighted-hearted social media posts on Instagram while attending the coronation of King Charles III. Barrett posted from inside Westminster Abbey, though guests were told to put their phones away. In one post, Barrett compared Charles’s crown to the sorting hat in the Harry Potter books.

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