Marie delighted rural people chose to vote for a Dubliner

As the first Dublin-born national president, Marie O’Toole never expected so many rural members would vote for her, much less that she’d win the office with such a huge majority.

She recalls the late football manager, Kevin Heffernan, saying she’d never get the role because ‘country people don’t vote for people’. O’Toole is glad she has broken that trend. The ‘country’ in Irish Countrywomen’s Association refers to the whole of the country, she says – not just rural areas.

“We have 1,500 members, spread across 34 guilds. My own guild, Portmarnock, with 125 members, is one of the biggest.