Ms Brid Rodgers, a member of the SDLP's negotiating team at the Stormont all-party talks and an elected member of the Northern Ireland Forum, has been active in the SDLP for the past 24 years. She is identified with the more moderate nationalist tendency within it. A native Irish speaker from Gweedore, Co Donegal, she moved with her dentist husband to Lurgan, Co Armagh, in 1960. From 1978 to 1980 she was the party's chairwoman. In 1983 she was nominated to the Seanad by the then Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald.
She was an unsuccessful candidate for the Upper Bann constituency in the 1987, 1992 and 1997 Westminster elections, and was an SDLP delegate to the Brooke-Mayhew talks in 1991-92. She is also a long-standing member of Craigavon Council.
She is known to believe that her hard work for and prominence in the party for the past 20 years might have been rewarded with a more winnable constituency than the unionist stronghold of north Armagh.