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Credit: Social Deomcrats
Mol an óige Holly Cairns TD
Ciarán Galway speaks with the Social Democrat TD for Cork SouthWest, Holly Cairns, exploring her political origins and policy priorities, as well as her initial experiences as an elected representative and optimism for political change. Holly Cairns is the only female TD in Cork. Just one out of 18. In fact, there are five-times as many Michaels representing the county of Cork in Dáil Éireann than there are women. Whilst not considering her family to be political per se, the Cork South-West TD first became politically engaged in 2011 when she canvassed for Senator David Norris in the presidential election. “I remember, at the time, being outraged about the injustice of the absence of marriage equality and thinking that he would be the president most likely to change it,” she remarks.
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Several years later, during the marriage equality referendum Cairns reignited her interest, before joining the Repeal the Eighth movement and deciding to enter politics. “I realised that knocking on doors and asking for votes really works. It was a moment of realisation, particularly with Repeal,” she says. Having watched successive governments “dragged along by change that is happening around it; like marriage equality and Repeal”, Cairns suggests that “we really are ready for a government that leads that change”. The winds of change did not arrive sooner, she believes, because a real alternative to the Civil War dichotomy did not exist.
