Irish Leader Plans to Call Election Later This Week

Simon Harris, Ireland’s prime minister, said Tuesday that he would dissolve Parliament later this week, setting the stage for a general election by the end of the month.

Simon Harris, the prime minister of Ireland, on Tuesday announced plans to call a general election by the end of the week, ending months of speculation over its timing.

In Ireland, only 18 days’ notice is required before a general election is called, and typically voters go to the polls on a Thursday or Friday. Many analysts expect the vote to be held by the end of this month.

“I do intend to seek a dissolution of the Dáil this week,” Mr. Harris said, referring to the country’s legislature as he spoke to reporters outside government buildings on Tuesday. “I don’t think that will come as a shock to any person right across this country.”

The election had to be held before March 2025, when the government’s five-year term ends, but Mr. Harris had previously signaled that the vote would be held before the end of the year. His center-right party, Fine Gael, is enjoying renewed support after months of struggling in opinion polls.

Mr. Harris, 38, the Irish taoiseach, or prime minister, heads up a coalition government that is made up of Fine Gael and another center-right party, Fianna Fáil, as well as the Green Party. He became the country’s youngest head of government just six months ago when he took over as head of Fine Gael from Leo Varadkar.

Mr. Varadkar unexpectedly stepped down in March after support for the party flatlined, with political analysts speculating that he understood Fine Gael needed fresh leadership as it headed toward an election.

Many had anticipated that Sinn Féin, the Irish left-wing nationalist party that won the popular vote in 2020, could garner enough seats to form a majority government after the next election, as support for traditional parties had waned. A cost-of-living crisis and a severe housing shortage had drawn widespread criticism of the country’s two main parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, who had joined together in an unlikely coalition alongside the Greens after the 2020 general election.

While support for Sinn Féin surged in 2020, the party did not win enough seats to form a government. It spent decades ostracized from mainstream Irish politics because of its past links to sectarian violence as the former political branch of the Irish Republican Army. But in recent years, it has been seen by many younger voters as an alternative to the establishment parties in power.

In the few short months that Mr. Harris has been at the government’s helm, though, Fine Gael’s fortunes have shifted, from a period of diminished support to a more favorable position. The latest opinion poll from the Sunday Independent saw the party leading with 26 percent of public support, Fianna Fáil with 20 percent and Sinn Féin’s popularity dropping to 18 percent.

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