‘I got pregnant at 23. It was unexpected but I knew I wanted to have the baby’ – SocDems’ Sinéad Gibney on becoming a single mother

Sinéad Gibney is the Social Democrats Dublin candidate in the upcoming European elections

Social Democrats European candidate Sinéad Gibney. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Sarah Caden

Sinéad Gibney still remembers the dinner she ate on the evening she told her parents she was pregnant. It was 2000 and she was 23, in her first proper job with Carr Communications and recently returned to living at home with her parents and grandmother in Blackrock, Dublin. The announcement threatened to derail the promising career that stretched in front of her. She was “terrified”.

“Sick because I was pregnant but also sick with nerves,” says Gibney, the former chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) and the Social Democrats Dublin candidate in the European elections.