Helen McEntee
Helen McEntee is an Irish Fine Gael politician who has served as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and Minister for Defence since November 2025 and deputy leader of Fine Gael since October 2024. A Teachta Dála for the Meath East constituency since 2013, she previously served as Minister for Education and Youth from January to November 2025, as Minister for Justice from 2020 to 2025 and as a minister of state from 2016 to 2020.
The daughter of Shane McEntee, who served as a Fine Gael TD from 2005 until 2012, she completed a degree in economics, politics, and law at Dublin City University and a master's degree in journalism and media communications at Griffith College. She began working at Leinster House in 2010 as a personal assistant to her father. Following his suicide in December 2012, she successfully contested the 2013 Meath East by-election to replace him; elected at age 26, she became the youngest female TD in the 31st Dáil. Re-elected in the 2016 general election, she served as Minister of State with responsibility for Mental Health and Older People from 2016 to 2017 and as Minister of State for European Affairs from 2017 to 2020.
After retaining her seat at the 2020 general election, she was appointed Minister for Justice in June 2020. She had her first child in April 2021, becoming the first cabinet member in the country's history to give birth or take maternity leave while in office. She had a second child in December 2022. Her justice portfolio was temporarily reassigned to Heather Humphreys and Simon Harris respectively during her two six-month periods of maternity leave in 2021 and 2022–2023. Following Humphreys' decision in October 2024 not to contest the next general election, McEntee succeeded her as deputy leader of the party.
Early life and career
The daughter of Shane and Kathleen McEntee, Helen McEntee is one of four siblings; she has two sisters and a brother. She is the niece of former Gaelic footballer and prominent surgeon Gerry McEntee and of Gaelic football manager Andy 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. From 2004, she studied economics, politics, and law at Dublin City University, where she helped to re-establish the university's branch of Young Fine Gael, which had been inactive for some time. 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.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. 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 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 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. In 2016, she said that she believes her father was "overworked and stressed. In a very short space of time, things went downhill."
Political career
2013 Meath East by-election, and 31st Dáil
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 with 9,356 first preference votes compared to 8,002 for Byrne. 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. At age 26, McEntee became the second youngest TD 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".
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... 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 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 also secured funding for the Slane bypass, as well as increased funding for schools and local community sports projects. In addition, McEntee campaigned for improvements to mobile broadband coverage in Meath and was a vocal supporter of the local agricultural industry. She campaigned for a yes vote in the 2015 referendum concerning the legalisation of same-sex marriage in the Republic of Ireland, and voted in favour of the proposed abolition of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the Irish parliament. Following a random audit of 22 members of the Oireachtas in 2014, she was one of five politicians required to repay expenses they had claimed that had been declared ineligible. She described the episode, which resulted in her having to repay €1,675.88 of expenses, as being a result of "human error".
2016 general election, and 32nd Dáil
McEntee contested the Meath East constituency in the 2016 general election, where she was one of two sitting Fine Gael deputies defending Dáil seats. Elaine Loughlin of the Irish Examiner noted that despite her relatively short time representing the constituency, McEntee had been "visible on the ground, attending community meetings and events", and suggested she would benefit from this at the forthcoming poll, particularly as she had enjoyed a greater presence than her colleagues. Newstalk radio presenter Ivan Yates forecast a win for Fianna Fáil in an area that falls into the Dublin commuter belt but felt that McEntee would hold on to her seat because she is from the largely rural north of the constituency.McEntee was re-elected to represent Meath East at the election, held on 26 February. She secured a seat in the Dáil on the eighth count, despite not reaching the 50% quota required under STV rules.
In the aftermath of an election that had produced no overall winner, and as Fine Gael parliamentary party secretary, McEntee voiced her support for a proposed Fine Gael–Fianna Fáil coalition, which had been put forward by Kenny and other senior party figures. The move was backed by Fine Gael's backbench TDs at a meeting on 7 April but rejected by Fianna Fáil. McEntee described the proposal as "an historic offer, representing seismic change in the political landscape". She also participated in an internal party inquiry into Fine Gael's poor election performance, as part of a team of TDs who spoke to unsuccessful candidates, but stood down from this position upon her appointment as a junior minister.