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

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

Social Democrats European candidate Sinéad Gibney. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Sinéad Gibney still remembers the dinner she ate the night she told her parents she was pregnant. It was 2000 and she was 23, in her first real job at Carr Communications and recently returning home to her parents and grandmother in Blackrock, Dublin. The announcement threatened to derail the promising career ahead of her. She was “terrified”.

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