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Helen McEntee (born 8 June 1986) is an Irish Fine Gael politician who has served as Minister for Justice since June 2020, although her portfolio was temporarily reassigned during two six-month periods of maternity leave in 2021 and 2022–2023. A Teachta Dála (TD) for the Meath East constituency since 2013, she previously served as a minister of state from 2016 to 2020. The daughter of Shane McEntee, a Fine Gael TD from 2005 to 2012, she was raised on her family's farm in Castletown-Kilpatrick, County Meath. She studied economics, politics and law at Dublin City University and earned a master's degree in journalism and media communications from Griffith College Dublin. She began working at Leinster House in 2010 as a personal assistant to her father. Following his suicide in December 2012, she successfully contested the 2013 Meath East by-election to replace him, becoming the first Fine Gael candidate since 1975 to win a by-election with the party in government. At age 26, she became the second-youngest TD in Dáil Éireann and the youngest woman. Re-elected at the 2016 general election, she was appointed Minister of State with responsibility for Mental Health and Older People from 2016 to 2017 and Minister of State for European Affairs from 2017 to 2020. In 2017, she married Paul Hickey, whom she met while he was a parliamentary assistant to Fine Gael politician Joe McHugh. In June 2020, after Fine Gael formed a coalition government with Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, McEntee was appointed Minister for Justice. In December 2020, she announced that she was pregnant with her first child; she gave birth to a baby boy in April 2021 and returned to work in November. She was the first Cabinet member in the country's history to become pregnant, give birth, or take maternity leave while in office. She gave birth to another baby boy in December 2022 and returned to work in June 2023. During her periods of maternity leave, she was a minister without portfolio while Heather Humphreys and then Simon Harris served as Minister for Justice. In her role as minister, McEntee has taken a strong stance on violence against women, pledging a "zero-tolerance" approach following the high-profile murder of Ashling Murphy in January 2022. However, she has faced criticism over public safety in Dublin city centre, especially following the November 2023 Dublin riot, when she survived a vote of no confidence tabled by opposition party Sinn Féin. Her effort to introduce hate speech legislation to Ireland, first announced in 2020, has attracted domestic and international criticism, with opponents of the proposed measures, including Elon Musk, arguing that they threaten privacy and freedom of speech. McEntee has also faced criticism over her handling of issues surrounding asylum seekers, especially following the passage of the UK's Safety of Rwanda Bill, which led to increased numbers of asylum seekers entering the Republic of Ireland from the UK. Early life and career The daughter of Shane and Kathleen McEntee, Helen McEntee is one of four siblings; she has two sisters and a brother. She is the niece of former Gaelic footballer and prominent surgeon Gerry McEntee and of Gaelic football manager Andy McEntee. Raised on her family's farm in Castletown-Kilpatrick, County Meath, she attended St Joseph's Mercy Secondary School in Navan, where she first developed an interest in politics, and represented her class on the school's student council. From 2004, she studied economics, politics, and law at Dublin City University (DCU), where she helped to re-establish the university's branch of Young Fine Gael, which had been inactive for some time. After graduating in 2007, she worked for a subsidiary of Citibank, but returned to higher education in 2010, to complete a master's degree in journalism and media communications at Griffith College. Her father was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fine Gael TD at the 2005 Meath by-election, winning the seat vacated by the resignation of former Taoiseach John Bruton, and was a popular figure with constituents. McEntee began to work in Leinster House as her father's personal assistant in May 2010, while he was an opposition TD. One of the first issues on which she worked with her father was a campaign on behalf of the owners of several thousand houses damaged by the use of pyrite, a material used as backfill during construction, that expands when damp or exposed to air. She considered standing as a candidate in the 2014 local elections, and discussed the prospect with her father, as well as the possibility of one day succeeding him as a member of the Dáil. She moved with him to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine when he was appointed Minister of State after Fine Gael became a party of government following the 2011 general election. Shane McEntee died by suicide on 21 December 2012, his death triggering a by-election. His brother, Gerry blamed cyberbullying through social media as a contributing factor in his suicide, and opposition politicians who had criticised him for comments he made about grant cuts to respite care. Fine Gael politician John Farrelly also suggested online abuse as a possible cause, but Helen McEntee has rejected this theory, since she had managed her father's social media presence and was not aware of any issues. Speaking to The Sunday Independent during her campaign to succeed her father as a TD, she said that she did not believe he had intended to kill himself, and that she did not think he was depressed. In 2016, she said that she believes her father was "overworked and stressed. In a very short space of time, things went downhill." Political career 2013 Meath East by-election, and 31st Dáil McEntee was selected to stand as the Fine Gael candidate in the Meath East by-election during a party convention held at the Headfort Arms Hotel in Kells on 7 March 2013. She was the only nominee whose name went forward to contest the seat, and the only woman among eleven candidates in the by-election itself. During her campaign, McEntee expressed her wish to continue her father's work while seeking to be "a young fresh voice", and focused on issues such as emigration, employment, and supporting local business. She was joined on the campaign trail by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who was confronted at a supermarket in Ratoath by an officer of the Garda Síochána angered at having to accept a pay cut because of austerity measures introduced by the government. McEntee participated in a televised debate on RTÉ One's Primetime on 25 March, along with Fianna Fáil candidate Thomas Byrne, Labour's Eoin Holmes, and Sinn Féin's Darren O'Rourke. She was subsequently elected to Dáil Éireann in the by-election held on 27 March 2013, defeating Byrne (previously a TD for the constituency) with 9,356 first preference votes compared to 8,002 for Byrne. In retaining the seat for Fine Gael she became the first candidate to win a by-election for the party whi.... Discover the Mary Helen Fein popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Mary Helen Fein books.