Josepha Madigan

Solicitor

Madigan is a qualified solicitor, who practised family law for 20 years, prior to her election to Dáil Éireann. She is also certified as a mediator by the Mediators’ Institute of Ireland and is a previous Council member of the MII. She is a former Specialist Liaison Officer for Family Mediation in the MII.^[6]

Author

Madigan is the author of the first book in Ireland on mediation: "Appropriate Dispute Resolution in Ireland, a handbook for family lawyers and their clients" (Jordan Publishing, 2012). She has also self-published a novel called Negligent Behaviour.^[7]

Politics

Madigan was elected to Dáil Éireann at the 2016 general election, as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Rathdown constituency, beating sitting Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter by nearly 1,000 votes. She was appointed Chair of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in July 2017. She had been a member of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council from 2014 to 2016.^[8][9]

Madigan issued a leaflet in 2014 claimed that providing accommodation for Travellers in her constituency would be "a waste of valuable resources". When asked about this later, Madigan claimed "Some people won't want to live beside people in halting sites [...] there might be more crime, that there might be anti-social behaviour".^[10][11]

Madigan was three weeks a TD, when she was asked to participate in the 2016 government formation talks. She is an active member of the Public Accounts Committee. She has also brought forward a private member's bill to reduce the waiting time for divorce in Ireland from four years to two.

On 30 November 2017, Madigan was appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, in a reshuffle following the resignation of the Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald.^[12]

On 29 March 2018, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar appointed Madigan as the coordinator for the Fine Gael Yes campaign in the Referendum to Repeal the Eighth Amendment.^[13]