Ruth Kelly

Kelly's maternal grandfather, Philip Murphy, served as an officer in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921).

In 1922 he was interned by the Government of Northern Ireland.

Murphy's detention file refers to him as 'quartermaster of the West Fermanagh IRA Battalion'.

He went on hunger strike to protest at his detention.

He was released unconditionally in June 1924, when internment ended.

Her paternal grandfather Francis (Frank) Kelly joined the Connaught Rangers and served in France during the First World War.

After the war, he returned to County Tyrone and took up a post of School Master in Altishane.

His first wife died leaving a young family of six.

He remarried Mary Agnes and had another six children.

One of them James (Seamus) was Ruth's father.

Kelly is a practising Roman Catholic, a member of the Opus Dei, and a regular attender at their meetings and events.

Her brother, Ronan Kelly, is also a member of the group.

Previously, uncertainty existed over Kelly's membership; she declined to say whether or not she was a member, saying only that she had received 'spiritual support' from the organisation.

Ruth Maria Kelly (born 9 May 1968) is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolton West from 1997 until she stood down in 2010.

Previously, she served as the Secretary of State for Transport, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Minister for Women and Equality and Secretary of State for Education and Skills, serving under both Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

Kelly was born in Limavady, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

She also lived briefly in the Republic of Ireland before moving to England where she attended Edgarley Hall, the preparatory school for Millfield School.

She was educated at the independent Sutton High School, run by the Girls' Day School Trust (GDST).

After being moved up a year and sitting O-levels at Sutton High School at the age of 15, she decided to move back to Ireland to look after her ill grandmother.

Her grandmother died after six weeks, but Kelly stayed for a year, living with her aunt and taking A-level French.

She returned to England on winning a scholarship to the sixth-form of Westminster School.

From Westminster, Kelly went up to The Queen's College, Oxford, to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1986, graduating in 1989, and then on to the London School of Economics where she was awarded a MSc degree in economics in 1992.

Kelly taught at University of Navarra, after she joined the Labour Party in 1990, becoming a member of the party's Bethnal Green and Stepney constituency party.

She was an economics writer for The Guardian from 1990, before becoming deputy head of the Inflation Report Division of the Bank of England in 1994.

She married Derek John Gadd, a local government officer, in 1996, and they have four children.

In the 1997 general election, Kelly gained the seat of Bolton West from the Conservatives while heavily pregnant, and gave birth to her first son eleven days later.

She gained her place in parliament as Tony Blair became Prime Minister with Labour's landslide election victory.

She served on the Treasury Select Committee; she was also appointed as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown, from 1998.

Kelly was a member of a commission set up by the Institute for Public Policy Research into the Private Finance Initiative, which expressed some scepticism about the operation of the policy.

In both positions her principal task was in the thorough revision of the Financial Services regulation system which was introduced by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

After Labour won the 2001 general election, Kelly was appointed as Economic Secretary to the Treasury.

Her role focused on competition policy and small businesses.

After a year she was promoted to be Financial Secretary to the Treasury, giving her responsibility for regulation of the financial services industry.

Kelly brought in new regulations to tackle the funding of terrorism after September 2001 attacks.

Kelly was assigned the task of dealing with Equitable Life after the Penrose Report into the life insurance company was published.

She rejected calls for government compensation to Equitable policyholders, on the grounds that the losses arose from actions of the company rather than from any defect of regulation, and that it was still trading.

Equitable policyholders continued to demand redress.

As a mother of four young children, she refused to work the long hours normally associated with such positions and refused to take a red box in the evening whilst at the Treasury.

In a minor reshuffle, she was promoted to be Minister for the Cabinet Office on 9 September 2004, replacing Douglas Alexander.

Kelly guided the Civil Contingencies Bill through its final stages in Parliament, which faced serious objections from some civil liberties campaigns.