Simon Harris (politician)

Early life

Harris was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, the eldest of three children born to Bart and Mary Harris. His family were largely apolitical, however, a great-uncle of his was a councillor in Dún Laoghaire. Harris was educated at St. David's Secondary School in Greystones and first became involved in local politics as a fifteen-year-old when he set up the North Wicklow Triple A Alliance to help the families of children with Asperger's Syndrome, autism and Attention Deficit Disorder. As a Junior Certificate student he lobbied politicians to get better facilities to allow children with such disabilities to be integrated into mainstream education.

Harris later studied a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and French at Dublin Institute of Technology, Aungier Street. Other sources suggest he failed to finish his degree as he wanted to advance his political career.

Early political career

Harris began working as an assistant to his future cabinet colleague Frances Fitzgerald in 2008.

in 2009 Harris was elected to Wicklow County Council with the highest percentage vote of any county councillor in Ireland. He was simultaneously elected to Greystones Town Council. As a county councillor he served as Chairperson of the County Wicklow Joint Policing Committee and Chairperson of the HSE Regional Health Forum. He was a member of Wicklow County Council's Housing Strategic Policy Committee and Wicklow Vocational Educational Committee.

Harris was elected to Dáil Éireann in 2011, taking the third seat in the Wicklow constituency. As the youngest deputy, he was selected by Fine Gael to nominate Enda Kenny for Taoiseach, making an impressive maiden speech.

In spite of being a first-time backbench TD, Harris served as a member of the high-profile Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. He was also a member of the Oireachtas cross-party group on Mental Health and introduced the Mental Health (Anti-Discrimination) Bill 2013 in June 2013.

Harris ran unsuccessfully as a Fine Gael candidate in the South constituency for the 2014 European Parliament election.

Minister of State

Harris was appointed to the top junior ministerial position as Minister of State for the Office of Public Works, Public Procurement and International Banking on 15 July 2014. During a period of intense flooding throughout the country during the winter of 2015 and 2016, Harris was forced to deny accusations that the government had left €13m in the budget for flood relief works in 2015 unspent while he had also secured funding for flood defences in his own constituency.

Minister for Health

Harris was appointed to the cabinet on 6 May 2016 when he became Minister for Health. Some of the immediate problems facing him in his new post included overcrowding in emergency departments and long waiting lists as well as soaring demands and huge cost overruns.

In his first year in the job, Harris faced the possibility of 30,000 health workers and 40,000 nurses going on strike. These developments occurred the same week that the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation announced that there had been a record 612 patients admitted for care on trolleys in hospitals around the country on the morning on 3 January 2017. The planned strikes were later called off.

In 2017 Harris was accused of "practising hypocrisy" over his stance on the Sisters of Charity's controversial ownership of the National Maternity Hospital. The controversy saw the resignations of Dr. Peter Boylan and Prof. Chris Fitzpatrick from the board of the hospital. The Religious Sisters of Charity later relinquished ownership of three hospitals; St. Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin, St. Vincent's Private and St. Michael's.

Personal life

Harris suffers from Crohn's Disease. In 2017 he married Caoimhe Wade, a cardiac nurse.