Harris was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, in 1986. He is the eldest of three children born to Bart and Mary Harris. A great-uncle of his was a Councillor in Dún Laoghaire. Harris was educated at St. David's Secondary School, in Greystones, and first became involved in local politics as a fifteen-year-old when he set up the North Wicklow Triple A Alliance to help the families of children with autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit disorder. As a Junior Certificate student, he lobbied politicians to get better facilities to allow children with such disabilities to be integrated into mainstream education. He initially studied Journalism and French, at the Dublin Institute of Technology, before dropping out of his course to pursue politics full-time.
Early political career
Harris began working as an assistant to his future cabinet colleague Frances Fitzgerald in 2008, when she was a member of Seanad Éireann. In 2009, Harris was elected to Wicklow County Council with the highest percentage vote of any County Councillor in Ireland. He was simultaneously elected to Greystones Town Council. As a Councillor, he served as Chairperson of the County Wicklow Joint Policing Committee and Chairperson of the HSE Regional Health Forum. He was a member of Wicklow County Council's Housing Strategic Policy Committee and Wicklow Vocational Educational Committee. Harris was elected to Dáil Éireann in 2011, taking the third seat in the Wicklow constituency. As the youngest deputy in the 31st Dáil, he was selected by Fine Gael to nominate Enda Kenny for Taoiseach, making his maiden speech. In spite of being a first-time backbench TD, Harris served as a member of the high-profile Dáil Public Accounts Committee and the Joint OireachtasCommittee on Finance, Public Expenditure, and Reform. He was also a member of the Oireachtas cross-party group on Mental Health, and introduced the Mental Health Bill 2013, in June 2013. Harris ran unsuccessfully as a Fine Gael candidate in the South constituency for the 2014 European Parliament election.
Harris was appointed to the top junior ministerial position, as Minister of State for the Office of Public Works, Public Procurement, and International Banking, on 15 July 2014. During a period of intense flooding throughout the country during the winter of 2015 and 2016, Harris was forced to deny accusations that the government had left €13m in the budget for flood relief works in 2015, unspent while he had also secured funding for flood defences in his own constituency.
Minister for Health
Harris was appointed to the cabinet, on 6 May 2016, when he became Minister for Health. Some of the immediate problems facing him in his new post included over-crowding in emergency departments and long waiting lists, as well as soaring demands and huge cost overruns. In his first year in the job, Harris faced the possibility of 30,000 health workers and 40,000 nurses going on strike. These developments occurred the same week that the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation announced that there had been a record 612 patients admitted for care on trolleys in hospitals around the country on the morning on 3 January 2017. The planned strikes were later called off. In 2016, Harris also contributed to the "A Healthy Weight for Ireland – Obesity Policy and Action Plan 2016 - 2025". A policy outlining "the Government's desire to assist its people to achieve better health, and in particular to reduce the levels of overweight and obesity". Harris claims that "the approach taken in developing this policy was based on the Government framework for improved health and wellbeing of Ireland". In 2017, Harris was accused of "practising hypocrisy" over his stance on the Sisters of Charity's controversial ownership of the National Maternity Hospital. The controversy saw the resignations of Dr. Peter Boylan and Prof. Chris Fitzpatrick, from the board of the hospital. The Religious Sisters of Charity later relinquished ownership of three hospitals: St. Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin, St. Vincent's Private, and St. Michael's. Harris supported the legalisation of abortion in Ireland, and introduced the Health Act 2018 into Dáil Éireann on 27 September 2018. On 26 April 2018, during his tenure as Minister for Health, the HSE confirmed that 206 women developed cervical cancer after having a screening test which was subsequently deemed to be potentially inaccurate on lookback, once a woman presented with a confirmed diagnosis of Cervical Cancer and given the known limitations of screening using smear technology. In the resulting scandal, Harris was criticised for his handling of the matter on multiple occasions. On 20 February 2019, Simon Harris survived a motion of no-confidence in his duties as Minister for Health, over his handling of the new National Children's Hospital rising costs. The motion was voted down by 58 votes to 53 with 37 abstentions. Harris introduced the Health Act 2020, emergency legislation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was enacted on 20 March 2020.
Harris was appointed as Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science on 27 June 2020, leading a new department in the government led by Micheál Martin.
Personal life
Harris suffers from Crohn's disease. In 2017, he married Caoimhe Wade, a cardiac nurse. They have 1 daughter.
