Máire Geoghegan-Quinn

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn ( Irish Máire Nic Eochagáin Uí Chuinn ; born September 5, 1950 in Carna , County Galway ) is an Irish politician of the Fianna Fáil . From 2010 to 2014 she was EU Commissioner for Science and Research in the Barroso II Commission .

Life

Geoghegan-Quinn is a daughter of Fianna Fáil politician Johnny Geoghegan . She attended Tourmakeady College in County Mayo , Carysfort College in Blackrock and became a teacher. In 1996 Geoghegan-Quinn wrote the novel The Green Diamond about four young women who lived together in a house in Dublin in the 1960s .

Geoghegan-Quinn is a member of the Fianna Fáil party. In a by-election in March 1975, she was elected to the Dáil Éireann , the lower house of the Irish Parliament . From 1977 to 1979 Geoghegan-Quinn served as Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Energy. In 1979 she was appointed Minister to Charles Haughey's cabinet . This made her the first woman since the founding of the state in 1922, and after Constance Markiewicz , who was Minister of Labor in the Provisional Government from 1919 to 1922, the second woman in Irish history to ever receive a ministerial post. From 1985 to 1991 she was a member of Galway City Council . In 1982 Geoghegan-Quinn became Minister of State in the Irish Ministry of Education, but her tenure was short as there were elections in November 1982, which her party lost. It was not until 1987 that Fianna Fáil managed to regain government responsibility, Geoghegan-Quinn became Minister of State of the Taoiseach . In 1991 she gave up this office because she was in opposition to Charles Haughey's party leadership within the party. When the party chairman's competitor, Albert Reynolds , came to the top of the party, he appointed Geoghegan-Quinn as Minister of Tourism, Transport and Communications. In 1993 she became Irish Minister of Justice and became Minister for the Legalization of Homosexuality in Ireland .

In 2009 she was nominated by the Irish government under Prime Minister Brian Cowen for the Barroso II Commission, in which she became EU Commissioner for Research and Innovation.

Geoghegan-Quinn is married to John Quinn and has two children. She currently lives in Luxembourg .

Web links

• Irish Parliament: Biography of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn (English)
• Irish Times: Geoghegan-Quinn is Irish nominee to commission (English)