Liadh Ni Riada is an Irish politician, businessperson, community activist, filmmaker, and native speaker of Irish who serves as an MEP for Ireland in the European Parliament. She is a Republican, and her party, Sinn Féin, a member of the European United Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) political group in the European Parliament, has announced her as their candidate for the 2018 Irish presidential election. She promised to be a “new President for a new Ireland” after announcing her candidacy, and she described her ideal Ireland as “pluralist and inclusive” and one “that respects the identities and traditions of all” in an interview with the Irish Times. She worked as a television producer and director before entering politics, and she was a member of the board responsible for establishing TG4. Despite being a newcomer to politics, she quickly ascended through the ranks of Sinn Féin because she accepted the party’s core beliefs and was exempt from the burden of the organization’s turbulent past. Ni Riada frequently advocates for the return of Irish as the nation’s official language because she is a natural Irish speaker who only learned English after starting school.
Early Childhood & Life
Seán Riada, a renowned Irish composer and pianist who had single-handedly revitalized Irish traditional music in the 1960s, and his wife welcomed Liadh Ni Riada into the world on November 28, 1966, in Dublin, Ireland. The youngest child of her parents, she was reared in West Cork by her siblings after losing both her parents when she was four and 10.
She moved in with her aunt in Limerick when she was 15 and started studying music for her Leaving Certificate Exam, the last test in the Irish secondary school system. She worked in a variety of professions after graduating from college before going into the television industry.
Career in Television
Liadh Ni Riada moved to Dublin in her early 20s and started working for Raidió Teilifs Éireann (RTÉ), a semi-state organization and Ireland’s national public service broadcaster. For the next 20 years, she kept working in the television industry until starting her own production company, Red Shoe Productions.
She directed and produced numerous films when she was at RTÉ, one of which focused on Michael D. Higgins, who was the country’s minister of culture at the time, and the Earth Summit in Brazil. Her career reached a pinnacle when Higgins appointed her to the board in charge of launching the Irish-language television network TG4.
She has always been adamant about the rights of the Irish language and proud of her heritage and culture. She frequently voiced her displeasure with the standard of RTÉ’s original series when she went independent, saying that they were “missing originality and creativity” because they were based on BBC productions.
Electoral Life of Liadh Ni Riada
Fiachra hAodha, the first husband of Liadh Ni Riada, “had a strong social conscience and a sense of injustice” “always stood up for the underdog” and “had a strong sense of justice.” She started her political career many years after his passing by joining Sinn Féin as the group’s national Irish language officer in 2011.
She was chosen as Sinn Féin’s Ireland South candidate for the 2014 European Parliament Election at a party convention in early September 2013, and one week later she started her campaign. She narrowly defeated Chris O’Leary, a Cork city councilor and member of the national party executive, to win the nomination by just two votes.
She pledged to create new jobs, prevent forced emigration from Ireland, support rural regeneration, and raise awareness about the rise in child poverty throughout the course of her campaign in the months that followed. She received 125,309 first preference votes, the second-highest number of any MEP in Ireland, and was thus elected as the first Sinn Féin MEP in the Ireland South in May 2014.
She joined the Budgets Committee (BUDG), the Fisheries Committee (PECH), and the Substitute Culture and Education Committee (CULT) of the European Parliament after winning the election. She also served on the delegation of the European Parliament to the People’s Republic of China.
As the coordinator for the GUE/NGL group on the Budgets Committee, she has continued to take part in committee operations ever since she was elected. She decried the EU’s growing military spending and pushed for a more socially conscious approach to the EU Budget as a critic of the EU’s march towards militarization.
She attacked the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) as part of her work on the Fisheries Committee and demanded a “fairer deal” for Irish fishermen over their fishing quota. She has advocated for taking action to reduce pollution and is a strong voice against plastic pollution, especially in the oceans.
She emphasized the fact that Irish is the only language in the EU that doesn’t receive full translation services in her work for the committee on culture and education, which was particularly focused on the “language discrimination” in that region. In 2017, she joined the Culture and Educations Brexit watchdog panel.
Ni Riada will run against current president Michael D. Higgins in the 2018 Irish presidential election, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said on September 16, 2018. It was as predicted because Ni Riada had been put to the test in front of a national audience during an interview with RTE Radio 1 in July, and McDonald had previously indicated her desire to see a female candidate run for office.
The son of killed prison guard Brian Stack referred to Ni Riada as “unsuitable” to represent Ireland on the international scene since he had previously failed to label IRA killings as “terrorism.” She had previously stirred much debate by raising objections to the HPV vaccine, but subsequently stated in an interview that she had always believed the vaccine was essential for protecting girls from developing cancer.
Bigger Works of Liadh Ni Riada
Since joining the European Parliament (MEP) in 2014, Liadh Ni Riada has represented Ireland and has served on the Budgets Committee, the Fisheries Committee, and the Substitute Culture and Education Committee.
Personal Legacy & Life
At a ceremony in her hometown of Cil Aodha, Liadh Ni Riada, then 27, first married Fiachra hAodha, who was 22 at the time. After two years of dating, they tied the knot in 1996.
Just two months before their first wedding anniversary, her husband, who had aggressive melanoma, unfortunately departed after suffering a brain hemorrhage. Ni Riada, who lost both of her parents at a young age, claimed in an interview that losing her husband affected her more severely.
She started dating Nicky Forde by the turn of the century, and the two later wed in 2012. She resides in Ballyvourney with her husband and their three daughters, Cáit, Ailsa, and Neans, in the Muskerry Gaeltacht of County Cork.
Liadh Ni Riada Net Worth
One of Ireland’s wealthiest politicians is Rodrigo. Our research of Liadh Ni Riada’s net worth from Forbes, Wikipedia, and Business Insider revealed a $5 million figure.
Trivia
Liadh Ni Riada organized a “language strike” in the European Parliament in March 2015 to denounce prejudice against her native tongue in institutions of the European Union. She solely spoke Irish in the parliament as part of the protest from the beginning of the month until St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, 2015.