Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin

Infobox Politician
name=Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin
honorific-suffix = TD


width=120px
term_start=2002
term_end=
predecessor=
successor=
birth_date=birth date and age|1953|9|18|df=y
birth_place=
constituency=Cavan Monaghan
party=Sinn Féin
office=Parliamentary Leader of Sinn Féin in Dáil Éireann
spouse=
website=

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (IPA2|ˈk^ɰiːvʲiːnʲ oː ˈk^ɰeːlɑːnʲ; born 18 September 1953) is a Sinn Féin politician from Ireland. He has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for Cavan Monaghan since 1997 and is currently the parliamentary leader of Sinn Féin in Dáil Éireann.

Background, early and private life

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin was born in Monaghan in 1953.cite web
url=http://www.sinnfein.ie/elections/candidate/9
title=Profile of Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin
work=Sinn Féin Party Website
accessdate=2008-05-08] He was a bank official with the Bank of Ireland in the 1970s, and served in a number of towns, including Ballinasloe. He became a senior bank official but then left the bank to concentrate on politics.

Ó Caoláin is married, his wife's name is Briege and they have five children.

Ó Caoláin underwent a successful cardiac surgery early in 2007. On 19 June 2007 it was reported that he was rushed to hospital, [ [http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhkfojgbidau/ SF's O'Caolain rushed to hospital from Dáil office] .] but he was released shortly thereafter and has since made a full recovery.

Political career

He has been active in republican circles for years. He was Director of Elections in the Anti H-Block campaign of 1981 when Kieran Doherty was elected TD for the Cavan-Monaghan constituency. Between 1982 and 1985 he was general manager of the republican newspaper "An Phoblacht". Ó Caoláin's first political success came in 1985 when he was elected to Monaghan County Council as a Sinn Féin councillor. In 1989, loyalist paramilitaries attempted to kill him and another Sinn Féin councillor. In the 1984 and 1989 European Parliament elections he stood unsuccessfully in the Connacht-Ulster constituency.

Ó Caoláin represented Sinn Féin at the "Forum for Peace and Reconciliation" in Dublin in the mid-1990s and was also a member of the Sinn Féin negotiations team during the talks which led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In the 1997 general election he was elected to Dáil Éireann for the Cavan Monaghan constituency, making him the first Sinn Féin TD elected since 1957 and the first Sinn Féin TD to take his seat at Dáil Éireann in Leinster House. He was subsequently re-elected in 2002 and joined by four other Sinn Féin deputies. He was re-elected in 2007. Ó Caoláin is currently Sinn Féin's Parliamentary Group Leader in the Dáil and is "spokesperson on the peace process and the Six Counties" [Quote from [http://www.sinnfein.ie/ the Sinn Féin website] . Many Irish republicans use the term "Six Counties" to refer to Northern Ireland. See Alternative names for Northern Ireland.] (Northern Ireland), as well as on health and children.

References and footnotes

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