Lights: People Who've Inspired Me. Political career Gilmore was elected to Dún Laoghaire Borough Council, and also to Dublin County Council, on 22 June 1985. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1989 general election as a member of the Workers' Party for the constituency of Dún Laoghaire, and was re-elected at every subsequent general election until his retirement from the Dáil in 2016. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he was linked with Proinsias De Rossa in attempting to jettison some of the Workers' Party's Marxist aspect and to move the party towards an acceptance of free-market economics. In an attempt to address these issues Gilmore and De Rossa along with their supporters sought to distance themselves from paramilitary activity at a special Ardfheis held at Dún Laoghaire on 15 February 1992. A motion proposed by De Rossa and general secretary Des Geraghty sought to stand down the existing membership, elect an 11-member provisional executive council and make several other significant changes in party structures was defeated. The following day at an Ard Chomhairle meeting, Gilmore resigned from the Workers' Party and joined with Proinsias De Rossa and five other Workers' Party TDs to create a new political party, Democratic Left (originally known as New Agenda). Throughout his political career, Gilmore has worked for peace in Northern Ireland. Along with other prominent figures including Proinsias de Rossa and Eamon Dunphy, Gilmore was among the first organisers of the 'Peace Train' campaign which was started in 1989 in response to the repeated bombing of the Dublin to Belfast railway by the Provisional IRA. Northern Ireland was also a priority for Gilmore as Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade during which time his efforts to reach out to the unionist community in particular were acknowledged. In the Rainbow Coalition, between 1994 and 1997, Gilmore served as Minister of State at the Department of the Marine where he is credited for overseeing major reform in port ownership, investment in port development, banning nuclear vessels from Irish seas and restricting dumping at sea. With Labour's Brendan Howlin, Gilmore was a central figure in the negotiations that led to the merger of Democratic Left with the Labour Party in 1999 under the Leadership of Ruairi Quinn. After Quinn's resignation in 2002, Gilmore unsuccessfully contested the Leadership won by former student union and political colleague Pat Rabbitte. From 1999 to 2007, he