Ruth Coppinger, PBPS, Dublin West

People Before Profit-Solidarity’s Ruth Coppinger is a councillor for Fingal and held a seat in Government between 2014 and 2020. The 57-year-old secondary school teacher is one of 12 children and was brought up in a council house in Nutgrove.

She is also a former Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) branch secretary. She has a bachelors degree from UCD and a H.Dip in Education from NUI Maynooth. She was a councillor for the Socialist Party on Fingal County Council from 2004 until 2014 and was elected as a TD in the 2014 byelection. She contested the introduction of the household charge and the subsequent property tax.

A prominent feminist and campaigner to repeal the Eighth Amendment, she is a long-standing activist for workers’ and women’s rights. She lost her seat to Roderic O’Gorman in 2020, which turned the constituency’s representation exclusively male. Her election, and that of Fine Gael’s Emer Currie, brings two women TDs back into the constituency.