Education: 1991: BA Honors History and Politics, Universaty of Ulster 1994: MSSC Irish Politics, Queens University, Belfast 1998: PhD Politics, Queens University, Belfast
Elected to the North of Ireland Assembly in June 1998 for the Upper Bann constituency (the same constituency as David Trimble the First Minister of the Assembly). Geographically this constituency covers the Lurgan, Portadown, and Banbridge areas.
Events in this constituency go to core fo human and civil rights issues in the North of Ireland as it is in this area that human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson was murdered in March of 1999; where a young Catholic man, Robert Hamill, was beaten to death in a sectarian attack while the police (RUC) looked on; where a Protestant grandmother was killed by a pipe bomb thrown in her house, because she was married to a Catholic; where the three young Quinn brothers burned to death in their house, because they were Catholics living in a Loyalist housing estate; and it is where a small nationalist community on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown are being held under siege by the Orange Order who insist that they have a right to parade in a triumphalist and sectarian fashion through their tiny community. This area is known as the murder triangle adn is probably the most dangerous place to be an Irish-Catholic Republican in all of Ulster.
Dara O'Hagen is under a death threat at this moment from the very same people who perpetrated these other murders because she dared to be elected.
All of these murders took place during the last three years during which an IRA ceasefire remained in place.
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