Ruairi Quinn - Early Life

Early Life

Quinn was born on 2 April 1946. His family were prominent republicans in the South Down area in the 1920s, taking an active part in the IRA during the War of Independence and the Civil War. The Quinns were prosperous merchants in Newry, County Down, but were forced to move south to Dublin in the 1930s where Quinn's father built a successful business career. Quinn was educated at St. Michael's College, Dublin and Blackrock College where he was academically successful and an outstanding athlete and a member of the Senior Cup rugby team. From an early age, he was interested in art and won the all-Ireland Texaco Children's Art competition. This led him to study architecture at University College Dublin (UCD) in 1964 and later at the School of Ekistics in Athens.

In 1965, Quinn joined the Labour Party working for Michael O'Leary's successful campaign in Dublin North–Central. In the following years, Quinn was a leading student radical in UCD demanding reform of the University's structures and the old fashioned architectural course that then prevailed. He rejected the Catholicism of his youth and became an existential atheist. He also travelled in Europe and became a europhile which was to be a defining characteristic of his political career. He qualified as an architect in 1969 and married for the first time that year before embarking on studies in Athens. He and his first wife had a son and a daughter. He married again in 1990 and has a son with his second wife, Liz Allman who's family came from Milltown, Co.Kerry. He became employed as an architect with Dublin Corporation in 1971.

In 1972, Quinn decided he would stand for the Labour Party in the next general election and hoped he would be the running mate of the sitting Labour deputy for Dublin South–East, Noel Browne. The party organisation was largely moribund since Browne's election in 1969 as Browne had been ill and little work had been done locally. When the election was called in February 1973, Quinn found he was the only Labour Party candidate as Browne refused to stand in principled opposition to Labour's decision to enter into a pre-election pact with Fine Gael to form a National Coalition. Quinn lost by 39 votes to Fergus O'Brien of Fine Gael in the final count. Following the 1973 election, Quinn began to rebuild the Labour Party in Dublin South–East with his mainly youthful supporters. He won a council seat on Dublin Corporation at the local elections in 1974 in the Pembroke-Rathmines local electoral area and took a leading role in the Labour Party group on the city council.

He was a partner in an architecture firm from 1973 to 1982. In 1976 he was nominated by the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, to Seanad Éireann when Brendan Halligan won a by-election in Dublin South–West and his Senate seat became vacant. He was first elected a Labour Party TD for Dublin South–East at the 1977 general election. Quinn was at this time quite associated with environmental issues being the first professional architect and town planner ever elected to the Dáil. He served as environment spokesperson for the Labour Party and was very close to the party leader, Frank Cluskey, whom he had voted for in the leadership contest of 1977. He lost his seat at the 1981 general election and was elected to the 15th Seanad on the Industrial and Commercial Panel. He was re-elected as TD at the February 1982 general election and has retained his seat since.