Leo Varadkar succeeded Saturday as Prime Minister of Ireland to Micheal Martin, as part of an unprecedented transfer between the two main parties of the center-right coalition in power.
He exchanges his post of deputy prime minister with Micheal Martin, head of government since 2020.
Leo Varadkar, a mixed-race and gay doctor, thus becomes for the second time, at the age of 43, Prime Minister of an Ireland long reputed to be very conservative.
In 2017, Leo Varadkar, then 38, became Ireland's youngest prime minister.
"
I accept this nomination with humility and determination and the desire (...) to offer new hope and new opportunities to all our citizens
", he declared, once his nomination was validated by the vote of the parliamentarians in a special session.
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Micheal Martin tendered his resignation Saturday morning during an audience with Irish President Michael D. Higgins in Dublin.
It represents "
the honor of a lifetime
" to have served as prime minister, he said.
Coming from rival camps during the civil war at the beginning of the 20th century, the two centre-right parties (Leo Varadkar's Fine Gael and Micheal Martin's Fiana Fail) set up this rotating position as part of a coalition with the Greens after the 2020 elections.
A doctor during Covid and Brexit
Leo Varadkar received the support of 87 parliamentarians in a vote on Saturday, while 62 voted against him.
The transfer of power will lead to a cabinet reshuffle.
The next general elections must be held by spring 2025. Leo Varadkar was born on January 18, 1979 to an Indian immigrant father, a doctor, and an Irish mother, a nurse.
In 2003, he obtained his medical degree to become a general practitioner.
His first term as Prime Minister was marked by Brexit and the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It had been deemed effective in setting up the first containment, one of the strictest in Europe.
He then returned to work as a doctor once a week while remaining at the head of the country.
He had also worked to find a trade agreement in 2019 with the United Kingdom after Brexit: the "
Northern Irish protocol
", to avoid restoring a border on the island of Ireland, still a source of tension today. between London, Dublin and Brussels.