Sue Ramsey MLA (born 1970) is an Irish Republican

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...

Early life and education

After growing up in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

, Ramsey studied

catering Catering is the business of providing food service at a remote site or a site such as a hotel, hospital, pub, aircraft, cruise ship, park, festival, filming location or film studio. History of catering The earliest account of major services be ...

. She represented the

Poleglass Poleglass () is an area of west Belfast in Northern Ireland. It is the name of a townland, a modern electoral ward, and a housing estate. The townland is situated in the civil parish of Derriaghy and the historic Barony of Belfast Upper. It is m ...

and Twinbrook areas on Lisburn Borough Council from 1997 to 2005.

Career

In 1996 she was an unsuccessful candidate in the

Northern Ireland Forum The Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue was a body set up in 1996 as part of a process of negotiations that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. The forum was elected, with five members being elected for each Westmin ...

election in

Lagan Valley The Lagan Valley (, Ulster Scots: ''Glen Lagan'') is an area of Northern Ireland between Belfast and Lisburn. The River Lagan rises on Slieve Croob in County Down and flows generally northward discharging into Belfast Lough. For a section, the ...

, and failed to be elected at the next year's UK general election also in

, where she finished 6th out of eight candidates. Ramsey was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

as a

Sinn Féin Sinn Féin ( , ; en, " eOurselves") is an Irish republican and democratic socialist political party active throughout both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The original Sinn Féin organisation was founded in 1905 by Arthur G ...

member for West Belfast. She lost her seat at the 2003 election, when she finished 87 votes behind Diane Dodds of the DUP in the closest inter-party result of the election but returned to the Assembly in 2004 as a substitute for Bairbre de Brún. She was then re-elected in 2007 and 2011. Regarding fire service in Northern Ireland, Ramsey said it was crucial that problems within the Northern Fire and Rescue Service 'need to be tackled as soon as possible’ and that it was ‘worrying that the Fire Service has been allowed to get into such a poor state of management'.

References

External links

Official Sinn Féin biography
1970 births Living people Politicians from Belfast Sinn Féin MLAs Northern Ireland MLAs 1998–2003 Northern Ireland MLAs 2003–2007 Northern Ireland MLAs 2007–2011 Northern Ireland MLAs 2011–2016 Female members of the Northern Ireland Assembly 20th-century women politicians from Northern Ireland Sinn Féin councillors in Northern Ireland Members of Lisburn City Council Sinn Féin parliamentary candidates Women councillors in Northern Ireland {{SinnFéin-politician-stub