FROM INSIDE THE walled garden of the Phoenix Park visitor centre, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and his Health Minister Simon Harris appeared in public together for the first time since the Eighth Amendment referendum result was announced at Dublin Castle two weeks ago.

This event was a considerable change of pace: to encourage people to live healthier lives by pausing the box set, having some fruit, meeting up with a friend and going for a walk, etc.

While a banquet table worth of healthy foods was laid out, people gathered in the sun of the Ashtown Visitor Centre, where the remnants of the Bloom garden festival were still being cleared away.

Media gathered around a wooden table dripping with fruit and vegetables waiting in the sun for the Taoiseach to arrive. When he did, it came with a procession of children and adults in ‘Healthy Ireland’ t-shirts who gathered round the table and started sampling the fruit.

Simon Harris picked up an apple.

“Simon! Can you juggle?” a photographer shouted.

“No,” he shouted back, but threw the apple into the air.

The photographer then asked everyone to pick up a piece of fruit of vegetable and extend it outwards towards the camera. Harris held the apple forward. Varadkar chose a glass cake stand with blackberries, raspberries and cherries piled up on top.

“That’s the way to do it,” a photographer said.

During the speeches he gave to the media and then to the Healthy Ireland crowd, Varadkar twice mentioned his constituency, Dublin West, adding weight to rumours within political circles that there’s a general election in the offing.

The analysis is that it has to happen before the third Budget of the Fianna Fáil-supported minority government. Although it’s technically possible for it to extend beyond that, think of it as a Cinderella-at-midnight scenario: it could extend beyond the expected time, but it would require a lot more magic than we think is possible.

Speaking of magic, the solution to the Irish border question is the next big obstacle Leo will have to face.

In response to questions about reports of infighting within British Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet (apparently the UK Brexit negotiator David Davis was on the cusp of resigning this morning), Varadkar said it wouldn’t be appropriate to comment.

But he did say that he didn’t have much confidence at the moment that proposals of a solution to the Irish border/customs union clash would be put forward by the British government anytime soon.

Theresa May is also dealing with the issue of abortion laws in Northern Ireland, which has received increased attention from politicians and activists since the landslide ‘Yes’ vote last month.

From an upstairs room in the Visitor Centre, Varadkar told the crowd that this building used to house the Papal Nuncio in Ireland, just a few doors down from Áras an Uachtaráin. Now the Nuncio is no longer at the centre of the park, and the Church is no longer at the centre of the State, the Taoiseach said, lightly referring to the discussions that followed the historic vote to repeal the Eighth Amendment referendum.

He also made other references to the Phoenix Park’s features and drew symbolic comparisons from them in relation to what’s being called a more modern Ireland.

The Áras was used as the home for the viceroy to Ireland, or the ruler acting on behalf of the British monarchy when Ireland was under British rule. The Áras is now a symbol of that shift from British monarchy to sovereignty, Varadkar said.

He spoke about Deerfield Residence, a spectacular white-walled building in Phoenix Park once owned by the British government which is now the US Ambassador’s residence. Varadkar said this was a symbol of how Ireland’s international relations had shifted.

Finally, he remarked that Dublin Zoo is also more popular than ever, though he wasn’t sure what the significance of that was.

Survival of the fittest, or surviving by any means necessary, perhaps?