Kit Ahern

Catherine Ita Ahern (née Liston; 13 January 1915 – 27 December 2007) was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kerry North constituency from 1977 to 1981 and a Senator from 1964 to 1977. Ahern was the first woman to hold several political offices, such as first woman to chair Kerry County Council. At the 1977 general election she was one of only three women elected to the 21st Dáil.

A member of Fianna Fáil, during the 1970s and 1980s Ahern exemplified the convergence of Irish nationalism and social conservatism that was growing in the party at the time, supporting the functional use of the Irish language while opposing contraception, divorce, annulment and women with children working outside the home. In the 1979 Fianna Fáil leadership election, she supported the failed attempt by George Colley and thereafter fell afoul of his successful rival Charles Haughey, who prevented her from returning to the Seanad by favouring others. Starved of political support within Haughey's Fianna Fáil, she retired from national politics by the mid-1980s. Her Parthian shot was to defect to the newly created Progressive Democrats in 1985, a splinter party from Fianna Fáil filled with many of Haughey's opponents.