Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he was surprised at the overwhelmingly positive response from the public when he first came out as gay in 2015.

Mr Varadkar, who at the time held the role of Minister for Health, revealed his sexuality to Miriam O’Callaghan on RTÉ Radio 1 in advance of the gay marriage referendum that year.

“I just wanted to get it out there, be able to live my life, be able to be honest about the referendum campaign that was coming up,” he told The Pat Kenny Show.

“This wasn’t a technical question about whether other people can get married, it’s something personal to me, so that’s why I wanted to have it out there."

Mr Varadkar said that the announcement was “a big change, more so than I thought it would be”.

However, he came to see the subsequent wave of attention as an advantage.

“It helped to make me a bit different and to stand out from other politicians,” he said.

“But that wasn’t what it was about."

Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar holds his hands up before a huge crowd at the Gay Pride Parade 2017 in Smithfield Dublin , Ireland. 24/06/2017. Photo: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie

The topic of Mr Varadkar’s coming out features in his new book, Speaking My Mind, which covers the highs and lows of his personal life and political career.

He said he was unafraid to address controversial events, such as the Golfgate scandal which rocked the government during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

“If I left certain things out, people would just want to talk about the stuff I left out,” he said.

Golfgate

According to Mr Varadkar, he no longer has any contact with Phil Hogan, who was Ireland’s EU Commissioner at the time of the scandal.

Mr Hogan was one of three politicians who resigned following Golfgate.

In the following years, Mr Hogan went on to blame Micheál Martin and Mr Varadkar – who at the time held the respective roles of Taoiseach and Tánaiste – for forcing him to give up his post.

Then-European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan holds a news conference in Brussels, Belgium in January 2019. Picture by: Alexandros Michailidis/Alamy Live News Stock Photo

“Most people, if they’re forced to resign for some reason, it’s because of something they did or said, or poor professional performance and so on,” Mr Varadkar said.

“I think what Phil subsequently did was to blame me and Martin for his resignation; accused us of populism and so on, and I don’t accept that interpretation.

“Even when your resignation may have been unfair, you have to, at least on some level, say, ‘Was there something I did that was wrong or foolish?’”

Mr Varadkar said that when it comes to resignations, “there’s more to politics than committing crimes”.

Main image: Leo Varadkar on the Pat Kenny Show. 15/09/2025. Image: Newstalk.