The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, has announced that he is standing down from the position and also relinquishing his role as the leader of the governing Fine Gael party.
Varadkar announced the surprise move at a press conference in Dublin. His departure as head of the three-party coalition does not automatically trigger a general election and he is expected to be replaced as taoiseach by his successor as Fine Gael leader.
“One part of leadership is knowing when the time has come to pass on the baton to somebody else, and then having the courage to do it,” Varadkar said in an emotional statement. “That time is now. So I am resigning as president and leader of Fine Gael effective today and will resign as taoiseach as soon as my successor is able to take up that office.”
He said his reasons were “both personal and political” and that the next taoiseach would have two months to prepare for local and European elections in June, and up to a year in office before the next general election.
“I believe this government can be reelected, and I believe my party, Fine Gael, can gain seats in the next Dáil,” he told reporters. “Most of all, I believe the re-election of this three-party government will be the right thing for the future for our country, continuing to take us forward, protecting all that’s been achieved and building on it.
“But after careful consideration and some soul-searching, I believe that a new taoiseach and a new leader will be better placed than me to achieve that – to renew and strengthen the team, to focus our message on policies, to drive implementation. And after seven years in office, I don’t feel I’m the best person for that job any more.”
The 45-year-old has had two spells as taoiseach: between 2017 and 2020, and again since December 2022.
Varadkar, who has an Irish mother and an Indian father, was the country’s youngest taoiseach when first elected, as well as the first gay holder of the office.
“I’m proud that we have made the country a more equal and more modern place,” he said on Wednesday. As he walked away from the assembled crowd of reporters, he was asked if this month’s double referendum on the constitution, a campaign widely seen as botched, had been “the last straw” for his premiership.
Varadkar was harshly criticised over the government’s crushing defeat in the vote, which had proposed rewording the 1937 constitution in an attempt to change outdated references to family and women.
Critics said he had rushed the debate in a “gimmicky” attempt to hold the referendums on International Women’s Day. In the end voters rejected the family referendum, with 67% voting no, and buried the other proposal, which related to women’s care-giving role, in an even bigger landslide of 74%.
In the immediate aftermath of the result Varadkar accepted some responsibility for the fiasco, saying: “There are a lot of people who got this wrong and I am certainly one of them.”
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He was also accused of presiding over incoherent messaging. But until Wednesday’s resignation the political fallout of the referendum debacle had widely been expected to be limited.
Varadkar attracted global attention when he took office in June 2017, aged 37. He did so not via a general election but by succeeding Enda Kenny, who stepped down as taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael after winning elections in 2011 and 2016.
In his first stint he earned widespread praise in Ireland for rallying EU support behind the backstop mechanism to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland during Brexit negotiations with the UK. Liberals also applauded Varadkar for his role in a 2018 referendum that legalised abortion – a milestone in Ireland’s transformation from a socially conservative Catholic society to secularism and pluralism.
On Wednesday Varadkar said his tenure as taoiseach had been the “most fulfilling time of my life”. His leadership, he said, had left Ireland a more equal and prosperous country, alluding to progress on LGBTQ+ and abortion rights. He also defended the government’s refugee policy, saying he was “deeply proud” that Ireland had welcomed more than 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion.
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