The surprise election story on Leeside, Pádraig Rice (34) has been a member of the Social Democrats from the off, joining the party the day that he watched online from Oxford in 2015 and saw Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall launch it at a press conference in Dublin.

A native of Camp in West Kerry, he became politicised through student politics in UCC where he joined Labour Youth and helped to organise and lead the USI Education Not Emigration protest as well as campaigning for the Marriage Equality referendum in 2015.

A stint in the Oireachtas with Independent Senator Colette Kelleher was followed by a period managing the Cork Gay Project and then working for Soc Dems’s Cian O’Callaghan before he won a Cork City Council seat in June for the South Central Ward. He lives in Ballyphehane.