"I think everyone needs to take a step back here." The 25-year-old legislator's intervention silenced and mystified his colleagues. One wondered if chillax was Latin. Use of the word made headlines. "All the young people know what 'chillax' is," Harris told the Dáil the next day.
He showed little sign of chilling or relaxing himself, however, and instead became a political vortex who, 12 years later, is poised to become Ireland's youngest prime minister. His social media skills have prompted a nickname, the "Tik Tok taoiseach".
Tomorrow the Dáil is expected to confirm Harris, 37, as successor to Leo Varadkar, who stunned the country last month when he announced his resignation as prime minister and leader of Fine Gael.
The higher education minister blitzed potential rivals to be crowned as the party's new leader.
Fine Gael's coalition partners, Fianna Fáil and the Greens, back him to become taoiseach. It will be the culmination of a precocious rise for a polished communicator who has rewritten the political rulebook in Ireland but is barely known in Belfast, London or Brussels.
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