Born in Dublin, Murphy attended primary school at Star of the Sea Sandymount and secondary school at St Michael's College. He went on to study at University College Dublin (BA, English & Philosophy), and King's College London (MA, International Relations).[4][5] In 2013, he was awarded a Marshall Memorial Fellowship.[6]
His father Henry is a retired senior counsel and author. His brothers Cillian (the actor known as Killian Scott) and Colin, a playwright and journalist, have forged successful careers in the arts.[7][8]
He dated jewellery designer Chloe Townsend, but according to Evoke, they split in 2019.[9] In 2021, he revealed that an ex-girlfriend received verbal abuse during his term as a government minister.[10]
At the 2011 general election, he was elected to the Irish parliament for the constituency of Dublin South-East, vacating his seat on the council. In the 31st Dáil, he sat on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), then regarded as the foremost Oireachtas Committee due to its special powers, and subsequently served on the Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis, established to examine the causes of Ireland's property-driven banking collapse which resulted in a national bailout. When that inquiry almost collapsed Murphy, together with Senator Susan O'Keeffe, was asked by their colleagues to rescue the final report, which was published in January 2016.[15]
In his first term he also led the Oireachtas delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, serving as a short-term observer to the Russian presidential election in 2012, and as Special Co-Ordinator for the Bulgarian parliamentary elections in 2013.[16]
In 2013, Murphy self-published "Reforming Dáil Eireann: A View from the Backbenches", a booklet containing a series of reforms which sought to strengthen the independence of parliament vis-a-vis government, implicitly criticising his own Party in government at the time: "But if the foundations of our democracy continue to be weak, whatever we build on them will be weaker.”[17][18]
When Enda Kenny announced his resignation as President of Fine Gael and Taoiseach in early 2017, Leo Varadkar appointed Murphy to run his parliamentary party campaign. Murphy was instrumental in orchestrating Varadkar’s successful election as President of Fine Gael and subsequently as Taoiseach.[22][23]
In the 2020 general election he was elected to the third seat in Dublin Bay South.[28][29] After the election he continued to serve as minister during the first phase of the Covid pandemic. At the formation of a new government on 27 June 2020 he announced that he was stepping back from ministerial politics to focus on reform of his party.[30] He resigned his seat in the Dáil in April 2021.
In May 2021, Murphy was appointed as Head of Mission to the election observation mission to the early parliamentary elections in Armenia.[32] In September 2021, Murphy was appointed as Head of Mission to the election observation mission to the presidential election in Uzbekistan.[33]
Murphy returned to Armenia and Uzbekistan in 2022 to follow up on recommendations his team had made to further enhance the conduct of elections in both countries and to support efforts to bring them fully in line with OSCE commitments and other international obligations and standards for democratic elections.[34][35]
In September 2022, Murphy was appointed as Head of Mission to the election assement mission to the parliamentary elections in Italy.[36]
More recently, in February 2023, Murphy was appointed Head of Mission to the early parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan.[37]
