CAITRÍONA RUANE was selected to stand for Sinn Fein in the 2003 Assembly elections and was elected as MLA for the constituency by the people of South Down. When the historic agreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP was reached in 2007, she was appointed Minister of Education in the new Executive.
 
Caitríona immediately put in place a thorough and comprehensive agenda of change to modernise and improve our flawed and divided education system. Central to this was the equality agenda which Sinn Fein had pledged to pursue in the life of this Assembly.
 
Caitríona has put equality for all our children at the heart of education policy. Powerful vested interests and conservative unionism have tried to block this programme of change but Caitríona recently outlined her “absolute commitment to building a modern, child centered and equality based education system which values all our children and in which all our children can succeed”.
 
Caitríona has a long and impressive record of work on equality and human rights issues. She is a fluent Spanish speaker and worked from 1983-87 for an international aid foundation in impoverished communities in Central America. On her return to Ireland she played an important role in the Irish international aid agency, Trócaire, before co-founding the Centre for Research and Documentation, which studied conflict resolution in South Africa and Central America. Caitríona hosted Nobel Peace Prize winners Rigoberta Menchu from Guatemala and Jose Ramos Horta from East Timor on a visit to Ireland.
 
In 1994 Caitríona was an international observer in the first free and fair elections in South Africa which saw the election of freedom fighter and former political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, as President of the new South Africa. Caitríona has lobbied the UN and the EU on human rights violations by the British government in the north of Ireland and helped to organise independent inquiries into the deaths of Fergal Caraher - shot dead by the British Army in South Armagh - and Patrick Shanaghan - a victim of collusion between loyalists
and British state forces.
 
From 1997-2001 Caitríona was the Director of Féile an Phobail - the West Belfast Festival and Europe's biggest Community Festival and a founder of the St Patrick's Day Parade in Belfast, when she took unionist councilors in Belfast City Hall to court on grounds of funding discrimination.
 
In 2000 President Mary McAleese presented Caitríona with the Aisling Person of the Year Award. A fluent Irish speaker, Caitríona, lives in County Louth, close to Newry, and is married with two daughters.