Although only newly elected to Westminster, taking the former seat of the UUP's Mr Ken Maginnis in Fermanagh-South Tyrone, Sinn Fein's sole female MP nevertheless knows her way around the corridors of power.
Still only 31, Michelle Gildernew has a great deal of political experience and her rise through the ranks of Sinn Fein has been remarkable. No stranger to the bright lights of the British capital, she was formerly the Sinn Fein London representative and was a member of the first Sinn Fein delegation to talks in Downing Street in 1997.
A member of the Assembly for Fermanagh-South Tyrone since 1998, she has become one of Sinn Fein's leading spokeswomen and is deputy chairwoman of the Assembly Social Development Committee. It is one of the smaller ironies of Northern politics that this committee oversees public housing, for it is in this field that the Gildernew name first came to public prominence.
Ms Gildernew's grandmother and pregnant mother were among those who took over a house in Caledon, Co Tyrone, in 1968 in protest at its allocation to a single Protestant woman over homeless Catholic families. This incident, although short-lived, was one of the most crucial in modern Irish history, highlighting inequalities in Northern society and providing a spur to the civil rights movement as well as, ultimately, the Troubles.
Ms Gildernew was not born at the time but the family name was an undoubted factor in her favour during the election. She is also seen as epitomising a new generation of Sinn Fein politicians who have come to prominence since the IRA ceasefires and who have had no connection with violence.
She is the first nationalist woman MP in Northern Ireland for 32 years. Unlike Ms Bernadette Devlin (now McAliskey), she says she will not take her seat. She is the first woman Sinn Fein MP since Countess Markiewicz in 1918 and Sinn Fein is also keen to point out she has emulated IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands by winning Fermanagh-South Tyrone 20 years after him.