Madigan was a first-time councillor when elected to Stillorgan ward of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in 2014. She came to attention at the time having described plans, in her election literature, for a Traveller halting site in the Mount Anville area as a “dreadful waste of taxpayers’ money”. She has been a practising solicitor for the past 17 years and is head of the family law and civil litigation department at Madigans Solicitor. Her main area of expertise is divorce and separation. Like her former running mate Alan Shatter, she is a novelist having self-published “Negligent Behaviour” in 2011. According to promotional literature for the book, it’s a tale of a “sassy solicitor” who rises through the ranks of a high profile Dublin law firm and has “professional as well as sexual recognition”. She is married to Finbarr Hayes, an advertising executive, and has two sons.