100 days of Simon Harris as Taoiseach: Early starts, Enda Kenny influence and Coalition strains

On Thursday next, July 18th, Simon Harris will complete 100 days as Taoiseach. He may already be halfway, or nearly halfway, through his (first?) term as Taoiseach. After another 100 days, on October 26th, he could be fighting an election campaign, if he does what everybody – friend and foe alike – expects him to do and calls an autumn general election.

So while 100 days is hardly sufficient time to judge anyone on anything, it’ll have to do. And anyway, the mark of Harris’s career is that everything happens in a hurry.

So, what’s the report card so far?

He’s been busy, that’s for sure. Harris was unopposed for the Fine Gael leadership – something that reflected, among other things, the political weakness of the party at that time. He promised the party “a new energy” and he has been as good as his word; he has kept up an exhausting schedule. “He’s going to kill us,” complained an aide, not entirely in jest, during the local election campaign. A never-ending stream of press releases and comments pours forth from Government Buildings on all issues great and small. If you missed any of this, you can catch up on his various social media accounts; the TikTok Taoiseach has continued to tik and tok in high office and relay his deeds on Instagram.

He rises early, around 5am, and prepares for the day before getting his two small children up and running. He usually arrives in the Taoiseach’s office between 7am and 7.30am. This is quite a culture shock to the staff who were used to a different regime. Typically, he is there until between 8pm and 9pm, though on Thursdays and Fridays there is an effort made to get him out and about, around the country as much as possible. He is careful to make sure one day at the weekend is free for family time – or at least as free as it possibly can be. He is never, after all, not the Taoiseach.

A look at his official diary for a couple of random dates confirms the frenetic pace and also the extent to which the job of taoiseach, any taoiseach, requires immense physical and mental stamina.

Monday, May 13th – by way of example – looked like this: 8.30am phone call with Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese; 9am in Newstalk studio for an interview with presenter Pat Kenny; 10am meeting with then Green Party leader and Coalition colleague Eamon Ryan; 10.30am staff meeting; 10.30am meeting with secretary general of the Department of the Taoiseach John Callinan; 11.30am transfer to Áras an Uachtaráin for one of his regular “article 28″ meetings to keep President Michael D Higgins informed of matters domestic and international; 1.30pm back to Government Buildings; 2pm phone call with the Slovenian prime minister Robert Golob; 2.30pm meeting with Fine Gael general secretary John Carroll; 3.30pm briefing by officials before the Cabinet Committee on Children, Education and Disability.

The leaders’ meeting with Ryan and Government colleague Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin started at 6.30pm and was due to finish at eight, but that rarely happens. Last Monday (July 8th), for example, the meeting didn’t finish until 10.30pm. And remember, for most of these meetings, the Taoiseach is the most important person in the room. He has to be on top of his game.

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Some of these meetings are for briefing and information purposes; others require decisions. And making decisions is the bread and butter of the Taoiseach’s job. Harris is said to be influenced by Enda Kenny’s example; the former taoiseach during his time in office advised his ministers to “keep making decisions”, noting that they wouldn’t always get it right but they had to keep moving on, making decisions, getting things done. He recently hosted Kenny in the Taoiseach’s office.

The doctrine has limits, of course; in a coalition government you can only make decisions when you have agreement. Harris has yet to secure agreement on decisions such as the funding of national broadcaster RTÉ and the future of the hate crime Bill, which – though nobody mentions it now – he shepherded through the Dáil as acting minister for justice last year.

There are “three or four” Cabinet committee meetings every week, one official says. They are slotted in for 90 minutes each, and the aim is to have three “decision points” from each meeting. Often, the role of the Taoiseach is to try to “break down silos”, using the power of the Taoiseach’s office to force co-operation between Government departments and agencies. He can be impatient and often requests meetings and briefing papers quickly – more quickly than some officials would like.

Harris has not sought to give the Government a new strategic direction or new priorities. That would not be possible in a Coalition Government guided by a Programme for Government negotiated and agreed four years ago. But he has made a difference, both to the Government and – more dramatically – to his party.

He was conscious of the need to build a relationship of trust with Martin (of whom he is an avowed admirer) and Ryan, and now Roderic O’Gorman, the newly appointed Green Party leader. But there are strains. Harris’s habit of commenting on and – as some of his partners in Government perceive it – claiming credit for everything the Coalition does irritates some of them.

Fianna Fáilers are assembling a list of their achievements in Government they claim are being hijacked by Fine Gael. Frankly, that is all to be expected, and it will get worse as an election approaches. As Taoiseach, Harris will have to manage this aspect of the Coalition relationship a little better.

In his party, though, Harris has transformed the mood. The task facing him when he became leader of his party (in March) and Taoiseach (in April) was to revive Fine Gael politically. That has been an obvious success. The change in the party’s outlook was almost immediate from his election as leader, and carried through to the successful local and European elections campaign in early June. Harris’s party approaches the coming election with a confidence that would have been unimaginable a few months ago.

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On some issues that have been points of note in the 100 days, such as the recognition of Palestine, Harris has taken up the ball that was passed to him and run with it. On others, such as his reaction to the sentencing of the soldier who attacked Natasha O’Brien on a Limerick street and the apology to the families of the 1981 Stardust fire, his capacity for projecting empathy – a necessary facility for any modern political leader – was fully on show.

The criticism is often heard that he is too PR-focused. It is true that his advisers are mostly former journalists or public relations people, and Harris himself is both a natural communicator and acutely aware that communications is an indispensable part of politics. But it is not the only thing that matters; it is necessary, but not sufficient.

The substance of long-term policy decisions – sometimes bearing fruit only in the years ahead – and the strategic direction of the Government is also the business of the Taoiseach’s office. Harris has not yet articulated a broader vision for the country or a worked-out plan about how to get there; and it is fair to say that he has not displayed an obvious hinterland. He has played the ball in front of him, and played it well, but he has not changed the game.

It is also fair to say that these are early days – and that the Harris premiership (or at least the first instalment of it) is an accelerated, condensed experience for all concerned; there won’t be time for everything. Ultimately, he will be judged on the result of the next election. On day 100 that will look a lot more favourable than it did on day one.

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