‘Simon Harris was only a teenager but we had already dubbed him the Future Taoiseach’

As a constituent and journalist, Liz Kearney has followed the politician’s career from his early days campaigning for autism services to building a huge online following — but as he prepares for the top, she is still unsure what he stands for

A young Simon Harris and his brother Adam during a New Year's Day swim in Bray. Photo: Michael Kelly

Liz Kearney

The fax machine beeped and whirred noisily as it spat out a press release. “Yet another missive from the Future Taoiseach,” someone sighed. It was the early Noughties and I was a working as a reporter at my local paper, the Bray People. The fax in question had been sent on behalf of a lobby group called the North Wicklow Triple A Alliance, but was signed by a local teenager called Simon Harris, whom we had jokingly nicknamed Future Taoiseach due to his boundless enthusiasm for sending press releases.

We even got one announcing that he had left Fianna Fáil and was joining Fine Gael. That one really made us laugh. He must have been about 16. Just who did he think he was?