LEO VARADKAR raised some eyebrows at the weekend when he went on national radio and publicly announced what only a small few had already known - that he's 36 years old.
Indeed, jokes about the minister's surprisingly young age (he first became a TD at 28, but first ran for the council aged just 20) dominated the reaction to his first public comments about being gay.
Here's a quick reminder of how old our current ministers are:
So the average age of a minister today is 52 - but that's actually far younger than the FG-Labour cabinet was when it was done:
The departure of the likes of Ruairi Quinn, Pat Rabbitte and Jimmy Deenihan definitely brought the average age down - but not many would realise that in fact Joan Burton is the second-oldest member of cabinet, and is indeed six years older than Eamon Gilmore who she replaced last July.
