Ellen Coyne: ‘There is a new political generation who never had to choose between progressive views and politically popular ones’

Ten years ago, Leo Varadkar walked into an RTÉ studio on his 36th birthday and told the country that he was a gay man. “It’s not a secret, but not something everyone would necessarily know, but it isn’t something I’ve spoken publicly about before now,” the then health minister told Miriam O’Callaghan. The past is a foreign country, and the alien place where the aspiring taoiseach came out publicly was one where he had no constitutional right to marry.

Ireland, at the time, was a laggard when it came to LGBTQ+ rights. Varadkar was coming out at what would be regarded as a comparatively late age, at a time when his political profile was starting to peak. Just two years later, he would be taoiseach.



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