Helen McEntee

McEntee became the second youngest TD (after Simon Harris) and the youngest female TD in the 31st Dáil.

During the election campaign, Seamus Morris, a Sinn Féin North Tipperary County Councillor, accused the McEntee family of putting their grief to one side to keep their "snouts in the trough".

Morris posted the comments on Facebook, but later withdrew them when they were published on the front page of the Irish Daily Mail, and issued an apology; Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams called the remarks "entirely inappropriate".

In retaining the seat for Fine Gael she became the first candidate to win a by-election for the party while in government since Taoiseach Kenny succeeded his father as a TD in 1975.

Helen McEntee (born 8 June 1986) is an Irish Fine Gael politician who has served as Minister for Justice since June 2020.

Between April to November 2021 and November 2022 to June 2023, she was a minister without portfolio during two periods of maternity leave.

From 2004, she studied economics, politics, and law at Dublin City University (DCU), where she helped to re-establish the university's branch of Young Fine Gael, which had been inactive for some time.

The daughter of Shane McEntee, who was a Fine Gael politician and TD from 2005 to 2012, she was raised in Meath and studied at Dublin City University.

Her father was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael TD at the 2005 Meath by-election, winning the seat vacated by the resignation of former Taoiseach John Bruton, and was a popular figure with constituents.

After graduating in 2007, she worked for a subsidiary of Citibank, but returned to higher education in 2010, to complete a master's degree in Journalism and Media Communications at Griffith College.

After taking a job in industry, she worked at Leinster House as her father's assistant from 2010, until his death in 2012.

McEntee began to work in Leinster House as her father's personal assistant in May 2010, while he was an opposition TD.

One of the first issues on which she worked with her father was a campaign on behalf of the owners of several thousand houses damaged by the use of pyrite, a material used as backfill during construction, that expands when damp or exposed to air.

She moved with him to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine when he was appointed Minister of State after Fine Gael became a party of government following the 2011 general election.

Shane McEntee died by suicide on 21 December 2012, his death triggering a by-election.

His brother, Gerry blamed cyberbullying through social media as a contributing factor in his suicide, and opposition politicians who had criticised him for comments he made about grant cuts to respite care.

Fine Gael politician John Farrelly also suggested online abuse as a possible cause, but Helen McEntee has rejected this theory, since she had managed her father's social media presence and was not aware of any issues.

Speaking to The Sunday Independent during her campaign to succeed her father as a TD, she said that she did not believe he had intended to kill himself, and that she did not think he was depressed.

She has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Meath East constituency since 2013.

She was first elected as a TD at the 2013 Meath East by-election, triggered by the death of her father, and she became the first Fine Gael candidate since 1975 to win a by-election with the party in government.

McEntee was selected to stand as the Fine Gael candidate in the Meath East by-election during a party convention held at the Headfort Arms Hotel in Kells on 7 March 2013.

She was the only nominee whose name went forward to contest the seat, and the only woman among eleven candidates in the by-election itself.

During her campaign, McEntee expressed her wish to continue her father's work while seeking to be "a young fresh voice", and focused on issues such as emigration, employment, and supporting local business.

She was joined on the campaign trail by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who was confronted at a supermarket in Ratoath by an officer of the Garda Síochána angered at having to accept a pay cut because of austerity measures introduced by the government.

McEntee participated in a televised debate on RTÉ One's Primetime on 25 March, along with Fianna Fáil candidate Thomas Byrne, Labour's Eoin Holmes, and Sinn Féin's Darren O'Rourke.

She was subsequently elected to Dáil Éireann in the by-election held on 27 March 2013, defeating Byrne (previously a TD for the constituency) with 9,356 first preference votes compared to 8,002 for Byrne.

McEntee took her seat in the Dáil on 16 April 2013, where she received a standing ovation upon entering the debating chamber, and was welcomed by Taoiseach Kenny, as well as other political leaders.

She described taking up the seat vacated by her father as "a huge honour", and said that it was an "emotional day for all the McEntee family".

The Irish Independent later reported that she had "impressed many...[by her] manner and choice of words to the media as she arrived at Leinster House. 'I drove down to the graveside this morning and had a few words. I think he [her father] called into Michael Collins the morning of his first day, so I called into my hero.'" McEntee gave her maiden speech to the Dáil on 8 May 2013, during a debate about that year's fodder shortage caused by cold spring weather, praising Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney's handling of the issue.

She was subsequently appointed to the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications, and the Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht.

She spent much of her first term focusing on constituency issues, among them championing the 2013 Pyrite Resolution Act, a €50m compensation scheme for homes affected by the use of pyrite in their construction.

She considered standing as a candidate in the 2014 local elections, and discussed the prospect with her father, as well as the possibility of one day succeeding him as a member of the Dáil.

She was re-elected to represent the constituency in 2016, and subsequently appointed as a Minister of State at the Department of Health.

She was also chair of the government's youth mental health task force, an organisation that works to increase awareness of mental health issues among young people.

In 2016, she said that she believes her father was "overworked and stressed. In a very short space of time, things went downhill."

She previously served as Minister of State for European Affairs from 2017 to 2020 and Minister of State for Mental Health and Older People from 2016 to 2017.

In June 2020, Helen McEntee was appointed as Minister for Justice in a coalition government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party.

The daughter of Shane and Kathleen McEntee, Helen McEntee is one of four siblings.

She is also the niece of former Gaelic footballer and prominent surgeon Gerry McEntee.

Raised on her family's farm in Castletown-Kilpatrick, County Meath, she attended St Joseph's Mercy Secondary School in Navan, where she first developed an interest in politics, and represented her class on the school's student council.