Trinity graduate and counselling psychologist Paula Roseingrave has announced that she will contest the upcoming Seanad bye election.
The Gorey Guardian has reported that Roseingrave, who received over 2,000 first-preference votes in the 2020 general election, is standing as an independent candidate. She ran for the Green Party in 2020 in the Wexford constituency.
She said her decision to run was partly driven by the need for more women in politics.
Roseingrave told the Gorey Guardian: “The Seanad is a great place for debate and I plan to use my background in academia, research and planning there.”
She added that the general election “allowed me to become very close to what’s important to me if I was in a position to influence things in Ireland”.
“The recent brutal deaths of Ashling Murphy and locally Nadine Lott are the ultimate examples of women not having control over their own lives and the vulnerability in that is enormous. We need systemic changes of all levels from education to socialisation from an early age as well as in the legislative system and how we deal with violence. Many women are living with horror behind closed doors right now and I don’t believe that the legislation [is] there to protect them.”
“I’m a passionate environmentalist and it’s scary to see how on a precipice we are when it comes to the issue. We are heading down a path of the unknown and where the tipping point is going to be as we’ve already seen that weather and climate is not what it used to be, and we should have listened the science before now”, she said.
According to the Gorey Guardian, Roseingrave has a background in psychology with over 30 years’ experience in both Ireland and the UK. As a counselling psychologist, she specialises in psychological trauma and advocates for better primary mental health services.
Roseingrave has been heavily involved with changes within the Psychological Society of Ireland and recently launched a special interest group on the immediate threat of the climate emergency.
Other candidates for the bye election include gender equality and disability rights activist Tom Clonan, who has run twice for the Seanad in 2016 and 2020. Graduate Students’ Union President Gisèle Scanlon and former diplomat and political commentator Ray Bassett will run alongside Roseingrave, as will former rugby international and disability advocate Hugo MacNeil.
Two Trinity PhD candidates, Ursula Quill and Ryan Alberto Ó Giobúin will also be on the ballot.
Ó Giobúin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology. His research concerns sociological inequalities in educational outcomes.
Quill is a PhD candidate in the School of Law, focusing on the Citizens’ Assembly and deliberative democracy. She was a secretarial assistant to Ivana Bacik for four years while Bacik was a senator and is a vice-president and former auditor of the College Historical Society.
Barrister Ade Oluborode announced last month that she would be contesting the election. Oluborode is a committee member of the Climate Bar Association, Comhshaol. She has previously worked in academia, medical and biotechnological research, real estate, financial services and the public sector.
Last week, Sadhbh O’Neill, a former Green Party councillor, will contest the upcoming Seanad bye election as an independent candidate.
