A prolific tweeter (except for early in the morning)

SOME time around July 2013, the-then Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport came to the realisation that social media was a powerful tool that he needed in his arsenal. Prior to this, Leo Varadkar was an erratic tweeter. He had a number of accounts, including one called @LeoVaradkar created in February 2010. His current @RealTaoiseach profile was created in June 2010. Another, @campaignforleo, was created in December 2010 and, after a flurry of activity in January and February 2011, his account remained dormant until July 2013. It then sprang into action again that September.

Whatever caused this lightbulb moment, Mr Varadkar has been relentless with his Twitter output ever since, averaging three tweets or retweets per day. And although the Taoiseach might want to represent the people who get up early in the morning, he holds off tweeting until the rest of us get out of bed – with the majority of his tweets being posted between 11am and 1pm.

Most of his tweets are sent during the week, with Thursday being his favourite day. He tweets most infrequently on a Sunday – presumably when he doesn’t have as many staff manning his account.

As the Irish Mail on Sunday established this week, Mr Varadkar is not the only person tweeting from his account. And the stats back that up, with tweets coming from a host of different devices: 719 of his tweets (26%) came from a desktop computer, while 632 (23%) came from an iPhone. Other devices used include a Windows phone, an iPad and a Mac.

A true party man, Mr Varadkar has retweeted the Fine Gael account 50 times, more than any other.