Mary Lou McDonald Biography| Mary Lou Mcdonald Profile
Mary Louise McDonald is an Irish Sinn Féin politician who has served as Sinn Féin’s leader since February 2018, and since the 2011 general election Teachta Dála for Dublin Central. From 2009 to 2018, she previously served as Sinn Féin’s Deputy Leader and from 2004 to 2009 as a Member of the European Parliament for Dublin.
Mary Lou Mcdonald Age
She is 49 years old as of 2018 May.
Mary Lou Mcdonald Education
Born in Dublin, McDonald studied English Literature, European Integration Studies and Human Resource Management at Notre Dame Des Missions in Churchtown, Trinity College, Dublin, Limerick University and Dublin City University. Her career to date has involved her in a variety of roles, including the Irish Productivity Center consultant, the Institute of European Affairs researcher, and the Educational and Training Services Trust Partnership Unit trainer. She did not join the party while attending some Fianna Fáil meetings, but instead joined the Irish National Congress, a cross-party republican organization. She later became president in 2000, leading a protest in Dublin against Lord Mayor’s involvement in the unveiling of a plaque where Ireland’s Grand Orange Lodge held its first meeting in 1798.
Mary Lou Mcdonald Husband
She was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. Her marriage to Martin Lanigan resulted in two children.
MARY Lou McDonald’s husband is in line for a five-figure payout following the privatisation of Bord Gais Energy, the Sunday Independent has learned. The Sinn Fein deputy leader has regularly criticised the Government for selling State assets, but now her family could pocket up to €66,500 from the sale of the energy giant.
Ms McDonald’s husband Martin Lanigan is among the 1,001 current and former Bord Gais employees who will share in a €53.6m tax-free windfall from a share ownership scheme which is being dissolved as part of the company’s restructuring.
Bord Gais recently announced the sale of the energy arm of the company for €1.1bn but the networks side of the organisation, where Mr Lanigan works, will remain in State control.
Ms McDonald recently said selling off “successful self-financing commercial State companies” such as the ESB and Bord Gais “makes no sense in good times or in bad”.
She added: “Instead of flogging off the last of the State’s wealth for a quick buck, Government should make commercial state companies part and parcel of the solution to creating jobs and delivering growth.”
When approached by the Sunday Independent and asked if the payment conflicted with her views on privatisation, Ms McDonald said she still believed selling a profitable State asset did not make sense.
Ms McDonald also confirmed her husband worked as a gas control superintendent in Bord Gais.
Mr Lanigan, who works in the emergency dispatch division, worked for the firm when the Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) was established by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in the mid-2000s.
Employees were given a 3.27 per cent share of the company in return for cost-saving initiatives which saved Bord Gais €32m.
It was announced recently that the scheme, which was open to staff working in both wings of the organisation between 2005 and 2009, would be wound up as part of the restructuring of the semi-State body.
The payments to employees are broken up into brackets depending on the number of years they were employed by the company for the duration of the scheme.
Those working for at least one year of the scheme will be entitled to a minimum payment of €17,500 while the highest payout to those working for the entire five years will be €66,500. The average payment is €53,600, according to the energy firm.
Staff who started working for the company after 2009 are not entitled to any payment, but there are 250 former employees who left the company in recent years who will receive a payment.
The Bord Gais Group of Unions opposed the sale of the company to a consortium of private firms headed up by international energy giant Centrica in December.
However the group of unions said it was assured by Government and management that employment terms and conditions would be protected under the deal.
The sale is part of a restructuring programme which also includes the incorporation of Irish Water into the semi-State agency and the rebranding of the company as Ervia.
The separation of the energy and networks division was mandated by the European Union.
Ms McDonald married her husband in the University Church on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin city centre in May 1996.
Mr Lanigan worked as a clerk in Bord Gais Eireann at the time while Ms McDonald was a Dublin City University graduate.
The couple began married life living in a semi-detached house in Arbour Hill in Dublin city but have since moved to another area where they live with their two young children.
Ms McDonald, originally from Rathgar in south Dublin, was recently filmed shopping in her local Superquinn in Blanchardstown as part of a TV3 documentary.
Mary Lou Mcdonald Salary
SINN Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has revealed the sum she pockets from her Dáil wages. In recent weeks she has refused to answer questions on how much she takes home from the €94,500 salary.
Mary Lou Mcdonald Sinn Fein
Sinn Féin is the largest Irish republican political party and was historically associated with the IRA, while also having been associated with the Provisional IRAin the party’s modern incarnation. The Irish government alleged that senior members of Sinn Féin have held posts on the IRA Army Council.
Mary Lou Mcdonald Politics
When she unsuccessfully contested Sinn Féin’s Dublin West constituency at the 2002 general election, McDonald ran for office for the first time, polling 8.02 percent of first-privileged votes. At the 2007 general election, she was an unsuccessful candidate in the central constituency of Dublin. In the 2011 general election, she again contested Dublin Central, this time collecting 13.1 percent of first-priority votes; she succeeded in taking the last seat in the constituency. In the 2016 general election, she was re-elected to the top of the poll and took the first seat in the central constituency of Dublin. From 2011 to 2017, she was a member of the Public Accounts Committee. In November 2014, after repeatedly questioning Tánaiste Joan Burton on water charges, McDonald refused to leave the Dáil chamber despite a vote suspending her.
In 2004, when she was elected to the Dublin constituency at the 2004 European Parliament election, McDonald became Sinn Féin’s first Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in the Republic of Ireland, receiving over 60,000 first-privileged votes. She served as one of two MEPs from Sinn Féin, the other being the representative of Northern Ireland, Bairbre de Brún. In 2007, the European Parliament magazine was shortlisted for the’ MEP of the Year ‘ award, watching for’ making the most valuable contribution in the field of employment policy.’ She led the Sinn Féin campaign against the Lisbon Treaty, which was rejected in the Republic in 2008, during her time in office.
McDonald was a member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs of the European Parliament and a substitute for the Committee on Civil Liberties. The number of seats for Dublin in the European Parliament was reduced from four to three for the 2009 European Parliament election. McDonald was in a tight race for the final seat against Eoin Ryan of Fianna Fáil and Joe Higgins, the leader of the Socialist Party. At the fifth count, McDonald lost her seat to Higgins. Her first vote of preference had declined to almost 48,000. In 2012, TV3’s Tonight awarded McDonald with Vincent Browne’s political talk show for’ Opposition Politician of the Year.’
Following the Sinn Féin ardfheis of 22 February 2009, McDonald has been a member of the Sinn Féin party leadership since 2001 and became the vice president of the party. She became Sinn Féin’s Speaker for Public Expenditure and Reform after McDonald’s election to the Dáil in 2011. She became Sinn Féin’s All-Ireland Spokesperson for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention after her re-election to the Dáil in 2016, which she held until she was elected Sinn Féin’s leader in 2018.
Gerry Adams was re-elected party leader at the party conference on November 18, 2017, but announced that he would call on the leadership of the Sinn Féin party to call for a special ardfheis to be held within three months to elect a new president and that he would not stand for re-election as TD for Louth in the next election. McDonald was announced as Sinn Féin’s president-elect at the close of nominations to succeed Adams as party leader on January 20, 2018, as she was the only nominee to enter the race. On 10 February in Dublin, she was confirmed as party leader at a special ardfheis.
Mary Lou Mcdonald Controversies
In September 2003, when she spoke at a rally in Dublin to commemorate Seán Russell, a leader of the IRA with links to Nazi Germany, McDonald attracted criticism. McDonald faced criticism in June 2009 after her campaign office emerged selling souvenirs and memorabilia from IRA. In December 2015, McDonald initially backed Thomas “Slab” Murphy, whom she described as a “good republican” despite being convicted of nine tax evasion charges, following a trial in the Special Criminal Court after the last person to testify against Murphy in a court was bludgeoned to death after a court case in Dublin in 1999.
She later failed to support the claim of party leader Gerry Adams that Thomas Murphy is a “good republican” after an investigation by the BBC Spotlight accused Murphy of being a “mass murderer” In January 2019, McDonald was criticized for sending two delegates to Nicolás Maduro’s inauguration, despite being denounced as fraudulent by Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Canada and the United States, as well as organizations like the European Union, with her statement “We believe that the Venezuelan election was open and democratic”