The Northern Ireland Assembly elections are on Thursday week, May 5, and a name appearing on the ballot sheet as an SDLP candidate in the South Belfast constituency is Elsie Trainor (nee McLoughlin).
Her upbringing in rural Laois won’t be something that will feature much on the doorsteps but living in Belfast for the past 20 years – where she is settled with her husband Tim and three children – means she has a firm feeling and understanding for the area she is seeking to represent.
But she says her early school days in Rath NS, near Ballybrittas, were very influential in shaping her interests.
The youngest of a family of 10, where she says politics and current affairs were staples of the kitchen table discussions, she attended the local primary school, secondary school in Portarlington and then university in UCD.
A marketing and communications professional, work brought her to Belfast and after helping with Clare Hanna’s election to Westminster a couple of years ago, she was approached by the SDLP to see would she run for the Stormont elections.
She was duly selected at the convention last September and finds herself on the ticket.
As it stands the South Belfast constituency has five MLAs from five different parties – Sinn Féin, SDLP, Greens, DUP and the Alliance.
Her running mate Matthew O’Toole is a sitting MLA but is also contesting his first election having been co-opted in 2020 following Hanna’s election as an MP.
Now the party are seeking to build on their popularity in the area by winning a second seat.
Trainor joined us this week on the LaoisToday Podcast to tell us her story. But one point that struck us was that of her formative days in Rath NS, and particularly the influence of then-principal Joe Hickey, whom she remains good friends with.
Should she be elected, she will be the latest past pupil to become a public representative. Already the school can count Sinn Féin TD Patricia Ryan and Fine Gael councillors Thomasina Connell and PJ Kelly among its alumni.
“It was a very current affairs aware school,” she says.
“I remember when the elections were on Mr Hickey would have us running mock elections and campaigns.
“I remember campaigning hard for Austin Currie in the presidential elections (in 1990)!
“It was so funny everyone always went to their family party lines when it went to picking their candidates.
“I think it was a big influence from him that he definitely kept us politically engaged.
“The most education that I ever got in terms of South Africa was from Mr Hickey.
“He was internationally engaged too and he wanted students to know what was happening in the wider world.
“You didn’t consider it was the curriculum, it was just sort of engagement. I remember lessons on the ANC. I can’t imagine it was curriculum stuff but it was very, very valuable.”
More than 30 years on from those days in Rath, she stays in touch.
“Joe is a great friend of mine all these years later and always in the bigger pieces, like when I was getting selected for this, he’d be one of the first I’d let know.
“Yes he’d a big influence on me but he’s also a good man and a good friend to our family.
“School was like that – Mrs (Ann) Garry I’d still be very friendly with as well. I wouldn’t have the same line of communication but just hold them really dearly.
“I think it is the making of a community when your teacher is really invested in you and your family and local life and certainly Mr Hickey served so long and so well and I think he had a big impact on us all.
“He’s a string through all the generations that draws a lot of them together.”
She adds that her late father Jimmy would be incredibly proud of her decision to run.
“My father would absolutely burst (with pride),” she adds. My mother (Patty) would be more quietly disposed to the whole thing.”
But she says to have come from not knowing anyone in Belfast to being a candidate is very “humbling”.
“It shows what type of open society we have.”
The full podcast will be available to download on all podcast platforms on Friday morning.
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