Malcolm Noonan
Malcolm Noonan is an Irish Green Party senator who has been a senator for the Agricultural Panel since January 2025. He previously served as a Minister of State from July 2020 to January 2025, and as a Teachta Dála for the Carlow–Kilkenny constituency from February 2020 to November 2024.
Before entering politics, Noonan worked for twenty years as a community and environmental activist with Friends of the Earth. He was a member of Kilkenny County Council for the Kilkenny local [electoral area] from 2004 to 2020 and was Mayor of Kilkenny from 2009 to 2010. Maria Dollard was co-opted to Noonan's seat on Kilkenny County Council following his election to the Dáil.
In 2011, Noonan contested the leadership of the Green Party. He was a candidate at the 2015 [Carlow–Kilkenny by-election|Carlow–Kilkenny by-election] and at the 2016 general election.
At the 2020 general election, he won a seat in Carlow–Kilkenny, taking the last of five seats on the tenth count. Noonan had proven transfer-friendly, and told The Irish Times, "for the first time, we didn’t have to sell the climate issue this election. Young people were asking us what we were going to do".
On 1 July 2020, he was appointed by the Fianna Fáil–Fine Gael–Green coalition government as Minister of State at the [Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage] with responsibility for Nature, Heritage and Electoral Reform.
Noonan lost his Dáil seat at the 2024 general election. He was elected to Seanad Éireann at the 2025 Seanad election for the Agricultural Panel.