Varadkar again prime minister of Ireland according to the rotation agreement with the once sworn rivals

Leo Varadkar was today elected Prime Minister of Ireland for a second time, taking over from Michael Martin under a rotation deal struck by their two parties in the 2020 coalition deal.

Reuters reports that the two parties were once arch rivals.

Varadkar, who previously served as prime minister from 2017 to 2020, has promised to speed up the government's plans to tackle the multi-year housing crisis. "We have a lot of problems and some of them we have to solve now, otherwise we will betray the current generation and the generation that comes after us. I am thinking particularly about housing and how we must do everything we can to turn the corner from rising homelessness and declining home ownership . We need to accelerate our plan," Varadkar told parliament.

The 2020 coalition agreement - which included the smaller Green Party - united for the first time Martin's Fianna Fáil (republican party) and Varadkar's Fine Gael (liberal-conservative), which are Ireland's dominant centre-right parties and have led every government since independence before one century.

Finance Minister Pascal Donohoe and Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath will also swap roles as part of the deal, while Martin, who will become deputy prime minister, is also expected to be appointed foreign secretary.

Varadkar indicated he would make very few other changes when he names his cabinet around 17:00 GMT.

He also revisits another familiar issue, the long-running dispute between Britain and the European Union over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, a British province with a long open border with EU member Ireland, but polls show housing affordability will again dominate his mandate.

With house prices, and rents in particular, at record levels and continuing to rise rapidly, recent data suggests that the elusive surge in housing supply could reverse next year.

"Teachta (Deputy) Martin claimed in his speech that this government is successful. Well, the rest of us must be living in a very different Ireland to you," said Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, whose party has led opinion polls by around 10 percentage points for more than a year.

"We live in Ireland where the housing emergency has worsened and households are struggling to survive. You certainly can't count this as a success."