Leo Varadkar is expected to prioritise experience but also bring in new ministers for his cabinet reshuffle and may make two new positions available.
Sources close to the taoiseach-in-waiting have said that he wants to present a team to the electorate that can win the next general election.
The Fine Gael leader will have a difficult task in choosing his appointments because the majority of the current team supported him during the recent campaign and expect to keep their jobs. There are 12 positions held by Fine Gael in the existing line-up, with the remaining three roles being filled by independent ministers. The constitution allows for a maximum of 15 positions.
Speculation has centered on whether Mr Varadkar will retain Simon Harris as health minister. Mr Harris supported Simon Coveney’s bid for Fine Gael leadership and is thought to have a difficult relationship with Mr Varadkar.
“If Leo does as much in the area of health reform as he is planning, I find it hard to see Harris staying there,” a close supporter of Mr Varadkar said yesterday. “That said, perhaps it would be the ultimate punishment to keep him in the most difficult department, but could he be trusted to deliver a radical plan for the health service?”
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Mary Mitchell O’Connor, the jobs minister, and Frances Fitzgerald, the tánaiste and justice minister, are also believed to be at risk.
With five members of the government from the capital and an expected elevation for Eoghan Murphy, a junior minister from Dublin and key member of Mr Varadkar’s team, it is thought that the new leader will need to make way for an increase in rural TDs.
Ms Mitchell O’Connor’s constituency, Dún Laoghaire, is vying to retain two of its three seats in the next election, but she has been accused of being a weak minister and has courted controversy during her year in office.
Ms Fitzgerald supported Mr Varadkar but his allies have said that “generational change” will be necessary when he undertakes his reshuffle.
“If we are going into the next election with the same team as last time we will get the same result as last time,” the source said. “I don’t believe that is how [Mr Varadkar] is thinking. We are now firmly focused on the next general election and my reading of him is that he wants to present an experienced, dynamic and unbeatable team.”
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As with most reshuffles, it is understood that geography and gender will play a key role. Heather Humphreys, the arts minister and only senior party member based in Ulster, has been singled out as a potential deputy leader.
With Enda Kenny and Michael Noonan, the finance minister, both stepping down from cabinet there will be two positions open and a major gap along the western seaboard.
Michael Ring, the junior minister for rural affairs, and Seán Kyne, the junior minister for natural resources, supported Mr Varadkar and would be likely candidates for elevation in the west.
One of the areas where Mr Varadkar garnered significant support from the party is the southeast, a region that has not had a senior Fine Gael minister since Ivan Yates in the late Nineties.
In Munster, Mr Coveney is expected to be made tánaiste, while Michael Creed is likely to return as the minister for agriculture. It is understood that Mr Varadkar plans to appoint only one senior minister to the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, and that Paschal Donohoe will nab the role. This frees up an extra position along with those left by Mr Kenny and Mr Noonan. Mr Varadkar would have to sack another minister to create a fourth position, as speculated by a source close to him.
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“I think that there will be four new positions created. It is not going to look too ruthless but it will provide fresh faces and new ideas and it would be a decisive way to show he is different from his predecessor,” the source said.
Mr Varadkar begins talks with the Independent Alliance today.