Harris needs to hurry up and prove himself at home first

Simon Harris and Leo Varadkar both became taoiseach within one year of an election. The difference is that the now former taoiseach came into office one year after the 2016 election, with four years still ahead to prove himself. Simon Harris has taken on the job with less than one year left until the next election. He doesn’t have time to settle in. He must hit the ground running — and do so, what’s more, in a period when war in Europe and the threat this weekend of a wider conflict breaking out in the Middle East between Israel and its Arab neighbours are presenting huge global challenges.

In that respect, the new Taoiseach could argue that he was justified in missing his first

Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil to make phone calls to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as the North’s First and Deputy First Ministers. Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald called that decision an “absolute disgrace”, but Leaders’ Questions is truthfully of more interest to the Opposition, who relish the chance to make prepared speeches and try to wrong-foot government leaders, than it is to the voting public who are generally at work when it happens anyway.

Optics do matter, however. A strong international profile never helped the leader of a poorly performing party at home. Photo opportunities with the Spanish prime minister in support of Gaza will pick up no final seats in constituencies that Fine Gael must win if Simon Harris’s tenure is not to be the shortest of any taoiseach.

People need to see this Government focused in its final months on domestic issues. For the past few weeks, there has been something of a carnival atmosphere in Fine Gael. Electing a new leader has been a welcome distraction from the polls. The hard work has to start now.

That the details behind the Taoiseach’s ard fheis promise to build 250,000 houses between 2025 and 2030 will not now be published until the autumn is concerning. Taxpayers are entitled to ask how he intends to achieve this ambitious target, just as the Government is to ask similarly hard questions of opposition parties when they make extravagant pledges with the same lack of detail.

Junior Housing Minister Malcolm Noonan insists that the plan needs to be underpinned with “evidence-based research”, taking into account population growth, migration trends and other factors. It most certainly does.

But they must have always known that would be needed; and whilst Simon Harris clearly had a plan for his own leadership well in place, moving quickly to knock out his rivals, it’s not a good look if he didn’t have a correspondingly decisive plan ready to go for what may turn out to be his most critical promise now he has the throne.

Labour leader Ivana Bacik accused the Government on Friday of showing “a lack of ambition and urgency”. It may be worse than that. It could be what it really shows is that the Coalition is out of ideas as to how the target can be met.

Next week comes another EU summit. More photo ops await. Meanwhile, the Dáil is set to go into recess on July 11. That’s a mere 88 days away. It won’t be back until the middle of September, by which point the next election will be within touching distance. Little normally gets done in the last months of any government. The new Taoiseach has no time to waste.