The Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, confirmed this Wednesday that he will present his resignation as head of the Dublin coalition government and as leader of the Christian Democrat Fine Gael party after recent defeats in two referendums on the concept of family and women.
The decision was made after meeting today with his council of ministers and two weeks after the surprising defeat of the Executive’s proposal in two referendums aimed at modernizing the concept of family and the role of women in society.
The conservative leader, 45, took the reins of the Government in December 2022, after two years as deputy prime minister in the coalition Executive with the centrists of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party.
According to the public broadcaster RTE, the three coalition parties do not foresee that Varadkar’s resignation will cause the calling of early general elections, scheduled in principle for 2025.
The Fine Gael leader, openly gay and of Indian origin, was elected MP in 2007 and already held the position of ‘taoiseach’ between 2017 and 2020, although he recently acknowledged that he would leave politics when he turned 50.
However, the decision to abandon both positions has taken a large part of his parliamentary group by surprise, according to experts today.
