Sinéad was born in Kanturk in north Cork and is one of five children. When she was 8 years old, her parents fostered a young girl with an intellectual disability from the north inner city of Cork who came to live with her family. This opened her eyes to a new world which struck Sinéad as unfair, that disabled people and their families were generally seen as unequal, with pity, and completely lacking in support and opportunities, purely based on their social and economic background and where they happened to live.

She attended Midleton College and went on to study languages at Dublin City University. She became involved in the Fianna Fáil cumann there where she would make lifelong friends and become encouraged to be politically active. She began working as a translator living in London where she met her husband Darran, from Donegal, and eventually moved back to Ireland where she began a stellar career in the tech sector based in Dublin.

n 2016, on a cold November morning during a gym class, she suffered a brain haemorrhage caused by an AVM which burst in her brain and underwent lifesaving surgery. This was followed by a determined and resilient recovery, often lacking in services support, to return to her everyday life albeit a new normal. As she began to realise many aspects of living we take for granted no longer worked for her owing to her acquired brain injury, she began to charter a path of becoming a disability advocate to become a voice for people living with disabilities and especially invisibly disabled people as she realised they were largely ignored.

Having rented in Dublin city centre for many years, along with her family, she began saving and looking for a home in Dublin to put down roots and settle permanently. Struck by its closeness to the sea, rail transport, and the friendliness of people and close-knit community, Sinéad chose here as her permanent home, where she works remotely full-time, and her young daughter attends a local crèche, where she is fast becoming a true Dublin GAA supporter! You will often see Sinéad walking around the constituency in the towns and in local parks (such as Ardgillan Castle) with her border collie dog.