Ivana Bacik

Ivana Catherine Bacik (/ˈbɑːtʃɪk/) (born 25 May 1968) is an Irish politician who has been the leader of the Labour Party since 24 March 2022 and a TD for the Dublin Bay South constituency since winning a by-election on 9 July 2021. Bacik previously served as leader of the Labour Party in the Seanad from 2011 to 2021, and a Senator for the Dublin University constituency from 2007 to 2021. She previously served as deputy leader of the Seanad from 2011 to 2016. Bacik came to prominence due to her abortion rights campaigning from the 1980s onwards.

Bacik's paternal grandfather, Charles Bacik, was a Czech factory owner who moved to Ireland in 1946. He eventually settled in Waterford and in 1947 was involved in the establishment of Waterford Crystal. Her mother's side of the family are Murphys from County Clare. Her father was an astronomer and was employed in a number of locations. As a result, she lived in London and South Africa, before moving to Crookstown, County Cork, twenty miles west of Cork City, aged six, when he became a physics lecturer in the Cork Institute of Technology. She attended the nearby national school in Cloughduv. When Bacik was 11 years old, her family moved to the Sunday's Well area of Cork City. At the age of 14, she moved to Dublin.

She won a scholarship to board at Alexandra College in Milltown, Dublin, and was awarded a sizarship at Trinity College Dublin. She has an LL.B. from Trinity and an LL.M. from the London School of Economics.

She lives with husband Alan Saul and their two daughters in Portobello, Dublin.

Bacik resigned as president of Trinity College Dublin Students' Union in 1990, after breaking the mandate from the Union membership regarding voting for candidates at a Union of Students in Ireland conference. Despite 13 TCD representatives being mandated to vote for one candidate, Martin Whelan, a former TCD SU president, it transpired that he received only 12 votes, Bacik's vote instead being given to the feminist former UCD SU officer, Karen Quinlivan. A controversy erupted in the Students' Union and a subsequent internal investigation led to Bacik's resignation.

She was taken to court by the anti-abortion group, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), for providing information on abortion. SPUC were successful in the court case, although that success came in the 1990s, long after Bacik had graduated from Trinity College. A High Court injunction had been ordered against Bacik and other members of the TCD Students' Union in October 1989. In November 1989, Bacik was informed by the Gardaí that the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) and the TCD Students' Union were under investigation following complaints that "they were corrupting the public morals by disseminating information on abortion." In an article she wrote for the International Planned Parenthood Federation, she said it was soon-to-be Irish President Mary Robinson that prevented her and students' union members from going to prison.

Bacik contested the Seanad Éireann elections in 1997 and 2002 as an independent candidate for the Dublin University constituency but was not successful.

She ran as a Labour Party candidate at the 2004 election to the European Parliament in the Dublin constituency. She ran with sitting MEP Proinsias De Rossa, who was also the party president, on the same ticket. She polled 40,707 first preference votes (9.6%) but was not elected.