Do we like them?

Do we like Simon Harris?

Our score: 6 out of 10. A mainstream centre-right leader with nothing nasty on trans or climate turned up, but his migration and homelessness remarks cost him points.

Simon Harris became Ireland's youngest ever Taoiseach in April 2024, after Leo Varadkar stepped down. He now serves as Tánaiste and Finance Minister, and leads Fine Gael. An Irish Times assessment of his long Dáil career described orthodox Fine Gael views on enterprise and corporation tax, so he is a mainstream centre-right operator rather than a firebrand.

The thing he gets the most heat for is migration. In late 2025 he said he stood by comments that migration numbers were too high, and argued his opponents were trying to shut down debate. In December 2025 he said a significant number of people in emergency accommodation do not have a housing right, and Sinn Féin and Labour criticised him over linking homelessness to immigration.

In January 2026 Dublin City councillors passed a motion criticising him for what they called dangerous comments on migration. Harris says his position is consistent and that the debate needs to be calm and informed. Where you land depends on whether you hear straight talk about pressure on services or a politician pointing at asylum seekers.

The harm check otherwise comes up fairly clean from what we could read. In September 2025 he called for urgent EU steps on Gaza and pressed Europe to lean harder on Israel. We found no campaigning against trans people or climate action, and no run of films or causes with people who push harm. Honestly, we didn't find his position on trans rights either way, so that's a gap.

Budget 2027 is the live story. The package was around 8.5 billion euro, with tax credit and income tax band changes and a big rise in State spending. The opposition called it broken promises, and the fiscal watchdog warned about the public finances. His defence is that the budget delivers on cost of living, and he accused Sinn Féin's finance spokesman of economic illiteracy.

On the good-person side, there's nothing in what we could read that shows him treating people badly, and he has been the target of online threats himself, which says nothing against him. The honest caveat is that several pages wouldn't open for us, so the court-and-allegations side is empty rather than clean. Our take: a decent, mainstream pick whose migration rhetoric is the thing to watch.