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Former Prime Minister of Ireland Leo Varadkar said Western countries should give more foreign aid to reduce illegal migration and defended the rise of deportations during his tenure at the 2025 Gustav Pollak Lecture on Thursday.

“We need to be able to show people that the government is in control of migration, is in control of our borders,” said Varadkar, who served as Taoiseach — the Irish Prime Minister — between 2017 and 2020 and again from 2022 to 2024.

He is the youngest politician to have been elected to the top post, as well as Ireland’s first multiracial and openly gay Taoiseach.

Varadkar gave the address to conclude his term as Hauser Leader at the Harvard Kennedy School. He spoke about expanding Ireland’s role in global assistance during his terms while managing the Covid-19 pandemic and economic fallout from the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union in 2020.

“If you’re heading the government, the first thing is to keep the show on the road, to make sure the economy functions and takes over, to make sure the public services are delivered,” Varadkar said. “The second is to deal with whatever comes at you.”

At the talk, Varadkar said he tried to address the underlying issues causing mass migration, citing the historic increase immigration to Western nations in the last two decades.

“A lot of the problems that we face around uncontrolled migration — the problems that we face at our borders, at your border, at our borders, too — are driven by the fact that there are so many push factors that force people to leave the countries they live in,” he said.

But Varadkar also said the country increased deportations during his first term, after he said the government “lost control” of the asylum system.

“Starting in my terms and continuing through, we have kind of toughened the rules,” he said. “We’ve stepped up deportations, have much tougher checks at the airports, prosecute people for arriving without documents in a way that we didn’t do before.”

Varadkar characterized Ireland as “a small country trying to have influence in the world” and that “increasing overseas aid and overseas development budget” would both help in maintaining Ireland’s place on the global stage and aid in controlling migration. He identified soft power in the form of alliances and cultural exports as Ireland’s primary political leverage.

“We are a small country, 6 million – well, 5.4 million people in the state – and one of two hundred countries in the world who are trying to punch above our weight in terms of who we are and what we are, and that meant making sure that we were very much engaged at the heart of the European Union,” Varadkar said.

“Obviously we don’t have and never will have significant military power, so leveraging the soft power that we have, and then also using, to a certain extent, our arts and culture to do that,” he added. “Because for a huge number of people, if they aren’t of Irish heritage, the first time they hear about Ireland is through our arts, through our culture.”

Varadkar also addressed Ireland’s relationship with the U.S. at the forum, attributing the close relationship to family ties between the two countries.

“I think the relationship that we have with the U.S. is very deep, because it is down to families,” he said. “I don’t really know anyone in Ireland who doesn’t have family in America.”

Ireland is currently the sixth largest investor in the U.S. and according to Vakadar, about 200,000 Americans across the country work for Irish companies.

Prior to his parliamentary career, Varadkar earned a medical degree from Trinity College, Dublin. During the Covid-19 epidemic, Varadkar practiced as a general practitioner, and was criticized by some who saw the move as a public relations stunt.

“I felt it would be a gesture of solidarity to spend a bit of time working as a doctor, and I did that with the vaccine program, giving vaccines and then in the early stage of contact tracing,” he said.

Following his stint as Hauser Leader, Vadakar plans to continue working in academia, private sectors, and pro bono work for LGBT causes.

“If you’re the prime minister, there’s three ways to leave office. You either die, you lose an election, or you resign,” he said.

“I decided it was going to be on my own terms,” he added.