In Ireland, being health minister isn't always healthy for one’s political career.

But after more than three years in the job, Simon Harris seems to be bucking the trend.

The Irish health ministry is a notoriously troubled portfolio that ministers struggle with until they are eventually shuffled out of it. Brian Cowen, who had the health job and went on to become prime minister, is said to have named it "Angola" for being full of political landmines.

Harris has seen his share.

The 32-year-old minister had to deal with the fallout from a cervical cancer screening failure, before his tenure, that resulted in deaths. He has been under fire for not finding solutions to people waiting on trolleys in hospital emergency rooms. And in February he survived a no-confidence vote after the disclosure of significant cost overruns at a children’s hospital.

Harris rallied public support for Ireland's 2018 referendum that effectively legalized abortion.

Together, these challenges provide good training for a future prime minister (Taoiseach, in Irish), a job that Harris doesn't rule out wanting to take on.

"Certainly, if you manage the Department of Health, I suppose it shows your abilities to take on a big role in government," he told POLITICO in an interview.

He also touted some of his achievements, which include rallying public support for Ireland's 2018 referendum that effectively legalized abortion; introducing one of the toughest laws on alcohol in Europe; negotiating prices for cystic fibrosis drugs for Irish patients; and agreeing on a health care reform plan with the opposition to address the issue of hospital overcrowding.

“I’m now at the ripe old age of 32, one of the longest-serving health ministers in the EU, which is kind of interesting, in a minority government,” he said.

On the international level, he moved Ireland into two regional alliances meant to negotiate drug prices — one with the Benelux countries and Austria, and another with mostly Southern European countries, known as the Valletta group.

“When you’re a smaller country, you can be picked off by Big Pharma, who often utilize patients' stories as though government doesn’t have a concern for that," he said. "[This] is obviously nonsense.”

Harris also refuted drugmakers’ complaints that it can take years to get new drugs reimbursed in Ireland. They need to be realistic, he said, and not throw in “an extremely large figure for a drug that will benefit a very small number of patients” in price negotiations.

'An extraordinarily frightening time for Irish women'

For Harris, health issues are personal. He began his political career as a teenager on a quest for better facilities for his brother, who has a condition on the autism spectrum. Harris himself suffers from Crohn’s disease, which causes inflammation of the digestive tract.

"I got involved in politics through an activist background and through my advocacy work, and I do genuinely believe that politics and political office [are] a way of bringing about social change," he said.

He added he would like to continue in the job, which he doesn't see as a liability.

"I’m really actually enjoying it,” he said.

He noted the ministry has a profound impact on people's lives, overseeing a health system that employs some 100,000 people, with an allocated annual budget of some €17 billion.

"I’m very supportive of our current Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who is obviously a young Taoiseach [and] doing a brilliant job" — Simon Harris

He became health minister in 2016, in a government led by Enda Kenny, his political mentor and then-leader of the center-right Fine Gael. When Kenny resigned a year later, Harris backed Simon Coveney, now deputy head of the Irish government, to be his successor. But current Prime Minister Leo Varadkar won instead. Harris was the only one from the old government to keep his job.

He is now careful to stress his support for Varadkar and said he doesn't want to take the top job anytime soon.

"I’m very supportive of our current Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who is obviously a young Taoiseach [and] doing a brilliant job," Harris told POLITICO. His comments about his own professional future, he explained, just mean "I wouldn’t rule out the possibility" of becoming PM.

As it happens, Harris succeeded Varadkar as health minister in 2016. Varadkar had been in the role for a little less than two years.

Harris and Varadkar stood together to respond to the fallout from CervicalCheck, in which women received incorrect results from a public cervical cancer screening program. Around 200 developed cervical cancer afterward. Those running the screening program knew about the lapse after an audit but took years to inform the women. Although it hadn't happened on his watch, Harris had to manage the fallout — which is not over yet.

“The CervicalCheck debacle was an extraordinarily frightening time for Irish women,” he said. “What did fall to me was to deal with it and to try to deal with it in a compassionate way,” he said. "But I also had to deal with it in a way that protects population health, to make sure that screening could continue in our country."

He brought in an independent expert and then published an implementation report of his recommendations. He also made friends with Vicky Phelan, the woman whose case triggered the scandal after being given €2.5 million by one of the labs that performed the tests.

Phelan thinks Harris would make a good prime minister. "He has stood up to the plate and made some tough decisions even when they weren’t popular,” she said, according to an Irish Independent report.

But CervicalCheck keeps dogging him. An outcry erupted in July that the Irish health service didn’t inform some 800 women about delays in getting their screening results. Then, approximately half of them received letters with the wrong results, the Irish Times reported.

Harris, however, remains upbeat about it, saying that the scandal has helped improve the screening program. He also noted that Ireland aims to eradicate cervical cancer by expanding HPV vaccination for boys starting this September.

The popularity that Harris gained from championing a 2018 referendum on repealing the country's constitutional amendment that effectively banned abortion may have also helped him weather the CervicalCheck scandal.

“I admire the way he handled the abortion referendum,” Mary Harney, Irish health minister between 2004 and 2011, told POLITICO.

“He works extremely hard, he’s very popular, he’s very hands on,” she said.

At the same time, he still needs to grow up politically, columnist Shane Coleman wrote in The Times in June. “He seems overly concerned about public opinion and what the media say about him,” he wrote.

“Harris won’t get to the very top by spinning and tweeting at a million miles an hour. Patience and quiet application, traits he needs to learn, might just get him there," he added.

Naomi O'Leary contributed reporting.

This article is part of POLITICO’s premium policy service: Pro Health Care. From drug pricing, EMA, vaccines, pharma and more, our specialized journalists keep you on top of the topics driving the health care policy agenda. Email pro@politico.eu for a complimentary trial.