The closest match is the Taoiseach (say “TEE-shukh”), who runs the Government much as the US President runs the executive branch. The big difference is that the Taoiseach is not elected by the public. TDs nominate one of their own, and the Taoiseach stays in office only while the Dáil has confidence in them.

Ireland also has a President, but the role is mostly ceremonial. The President signs bills into law, represents the State abroad and holds a few reserve powers, such as referring a bill to the Supreme Court. Voters elect the President directly for seven years.

• Taoiseach: head of government. Micheál Martin since January 2025.
• Tánaiste: deputy prime minister. Simon Harris.
• President: head of State. Catherine Connolly since November 2025.

One rule explains most of Irish politics: the Government exists only while it has the support of a majority in the Dáil. Voters elect TDs; TDs choose the Taoiseach; the Taoiseach picks Ministers who run the departments. If the Dáil withdraws its confidence, the Government falls.

The President sits outside that chain. The office is directly elected and politically neutral, which is why a popular President can be from a different tradition to the Government of the day.

The Oireachtas is Ireland’s parliament: the President, the Dáil and the Seanad. The Dáil is like the House of Representatives, but with 174 members it is far smaller, and it holds the real power because Governments are formed from it and answer to it.

The Seanad is nothing like the US Senate. It has 60 members, most elected by panels and university graduates and 11 nominated by the Taoiseach. It can delay Bills for a limited time but cannot block them, and it does not confirm Ministers or judges.

There is no separation between the executive and the legislature in the American sense. Ministers are sitting TDs (or occasionally Senators), they answer questions in the chamber every sitting week, and the Government can usually pass its Bills because it controls a majority of votes.

Ireland uses proportional representation with the single transferable vote (PR-STV). Each of the 43 constituencies elects three, four or five TDs. Voters rank candidates 1, 2, 3 and so on, and votes transfer as candidates are elected or eliminated. It is a bit like ranked-choice voting, but with several winners per area.

There are no party primaries and no Electoral College, and an independent commission draws the constituency boundaries, so gerrymandering is not an issue. Elections are usually held on a Friday, ballots are counted by hand and the count can take days. Voters must be Irish or British citizens to vote in Dáil elections.

Because PR-STV spreads seats across many parties and independents, no single party has won a majority in decades. After an election, parties negotiate a programme for government. The current Government is a coalition of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and independent TDs.

That makes Irish politics look less polarised than in the US. It also means the Taoiseach can lose their job in a vote of no confidence without an election being held first, and that party leaders can rotate: Micheál Martin is due to hand over to Simon Harris in November 2027.

Ireland has a written Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, adopted in 1937. Unlike Article V in the US, changing it always requires a referendum in which every voter takes part. The Supreme Court can strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution, much like judicial review in the US.

Ireland is a unitary state, not a federation. There are no states. Local councils exist, but they have far less power than US states or even many US cities.

Judges are appointed by the President on the advice of the Government, not confirmed by a Senate vote, and appointments are far less politically contested than US Supreme Court nominations.

A few assumptions carry over from US politics and trip people up.

Irish politics uses Irish-language titles even in English-language news. Nobody translates them, so it helps to know the handful that come up every day.

US citizens living in the US cannot vote in Irish elections. But anyone with an Irish-born parent or grandparent may be able to claim Irish citizenship through the Foreign Births Register, which then gives the right to vote if they move to Ireland.

Irish citizens living abroad generally cannot vote by post in Irish elections either, apart from limited exceptions such as diplomats. You need to be ordinarily resident in Ireland to be on the register.

Everything the Oireachtas does is published: every vote, every speech and every answer to a parliamentary question. The hard part is finding what matters in hundreds of pages of transcripts.