The daughter of a former Fianna Fáil President of Ireland is standing for the Green Party in the local elections in Dublin.
Ms Nessa Childers, daughter of Erskine Childers, is running in the Blackrock ward in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council election in June.
She told The Irish Times yesterday that she had never contemplated joining Fianna Fáil. "I was attracted by the ethos of the Green Party, its concern for the environment and quality of life issues. I feel comfortable with the party," she added.
Ms Childers's father was a Fianna Fáil minister under Eamon de Valera, Seán Lemass and Jack Lynch, before being elected president in 1973. He died suddenly over a year later.
Her grandfather, Robert Erskine Childers, fought on the Republican side in the Civil War and was shot in November 1922 following his capture by Free State forces.
Ms Childers said that she had become politically active in 2000, when she joined the Labour Party.
"I have great affection for the Labour Party and we had what I might call an amicable separation. I have good memories of the party on an individual level."
Ms Childers works as a psychoanalyst and is course director of a training programme for psychotherapists in Trinity College Dublin. She is married to Mr Ross Skelton and they have two children.