You'd be wrong. Caitriona Ruane, who once graced Wimbledon's courts, plays for Sinn Fein.

She's very much a woman on the move, settling into her new job as the North's education minister and on course to take the SDLP's South Down seat at the next Westminster election.

She's pictured beside Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness almost as much as Mary Lou. Like the Sinn Fein MEP, she's a Southerner. But she's no latecomer to republican circles. Ruane has been involved in Northern politics from the 1980s, when it was neither acceptable nor trendy.

Yet her politics . . . secular Irish liberation theology meets PC community activism . . . have dovetailed perfectly with the peace process. She's every inch new Sinn Fein. She was parachuted into South Down by the leadership to replace veteran hardline republican Martin Cunningham.

She comes from a comfortable Mayo family of seven. Her father was a civil engineer.

From an early age, she was political, identifying strongly with the under-dog.

She is one of the few Shinners with excellent Irish and she is fluent in Spanish.

She bypassed college. Tennis was her great love. She was 1981 Irish champion.

She played in the Wimbledon juniors and represented Ireland at the Federation Cup . . . the female equivalent of the Davis Cup . . . in Japan and Berlin. Her favourite tennis players were very different:

Hana Mandlikova, who struggled with self-confidence, and Centre Court bad boy Ille Nastase.

Maybe Ruane caught the travel bug on the tennis circuit because she was soon off to far-flung places for more substantial reasons. She worked with a US-based aid agency in Latin America from 1983-87. It was more grassroots activism than Che Guevara-style resistance. There were "bee-keeping and rabbit projects" and training locals in herbal medicine.

She worked for Trocaire in Dublin before founding the Centre for Research and Documentation, which studied national and international issues. She was appalled at Section 31 and the Republic's unwillingness to even discuss the North.

She married Brian McAteer, a tiler, whose brother Aidan is a senior Sinn Fein strategist. Brian was prosecuted in 1996 for travelling under a false passport.

They live in Omeath, Co Louth, with their two daughters. One attends a leading Co Down Catholic grammar school, the other a bunscoil. The family travels regularly, holidaying last year in Venezuela.

During the 1990s, Ruane insisted she was not party-political. She says she joined Sinn Fein only in recent years.

She's a former director of the West Belfast festival. But it was in leading the Colombia Three's 'Bring them home' campaign that she rose to prominence.

She travelled to Bogota 22 times.

Fellow campaign member Mary White, a Fianna Fail senator, was with Ruane in Colombia: "She's tough and ruthless and has what it takes to get on.

She left no stone unturned. The fact the men came home alive is down to her.

She'd be up all night on the lap-top in Bogota, working away. She networked well, building excellent relations with the UN Human Rights' Commission, the Red Cross and the embassies.

"She handled the media, dealt with the men's lawyers, and built a good personal relationship with the prison director from a shaky foundation. Our hotel was surrounded by people with guns.

Bogota is a very dangerous place but she was unfazed. She kept us safe, not letting us roam alone downtown, ensuring we stayed in a group."

At home, opinion on Ruane is divided.

Sometimes, when women are described as bossy, it's sexist shorthand for assertive. But a range of voices says she's irritating and difficult to work with.

"I remember her lobbying me about funding for the West Belfast festival, " says one nationalist politician. "I was supportive from the start but she began bossing me about. Her tactics were so offputting. She rubs people up the wrong way." A voluntary sector source says:

"If she wants to charm you, she charms you. If she wants to eat you, she eats you.

She'd walk all over you to get what she wants."

Sometimes, she gives opponents ample ammunition. Once, she imagined herself marching down the Falls on St Patrick's Day with Countess Markievicz, James Connolly and Franz Fanon.

Repeating pieties in breathless, hushed tones leads to ridicule for Ruane. "She obviously has ability but I can't take her seriously, " says a fellow Assembly member. "When you analyse what she's saying, it's claptrap. It's all maudlin cliches."

A criticism, even from those who champion the same causes, is that she's too PC. "After Sinn Fein offices were raided and the last Executive collapsed amidst the Stormontgate spy-ring allegations, republicans protested in Warrenpoint.

"Somebody made a poster saying 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'. Caitriona complained this was racist. It was pointed out to her that it wasn't meant to be offensive to Irish travellers . . . it was the name of a John Le Carre novel, " says a republican source.

Sometimes, Ruane is more down-toearth. She once told republican men that commitments to equality were "hollow words if you are not working with us in our homes, minding your children, cleaning the toilets, and doing the cooking".

But chiding the Down Democrat for describing the SDLP's Carmel O'Boyle as the chairman of Down Council didn't impress. "She was concerning herself about whether I was a chairman or chairperson when, at the very same time, there was a real women's rights' issue under her nose, " says Carmel O'Boyle.

"Vera McVeigh, a woman in her 80s, had stood in a bog amidst a failed search to find the body of her son Columba, one of the disappearedf Instead of fussing over what baloney I was called, Caitriona should have been trying to find out from the IRA where Columba was buried and ending a degrading situation for a real Irish woman."

During a south Down suicide awareness campaign, some people were struck by Ruane's commitment and compassion ."I always found Caitriona genuine, courteous and friendly, " says former Sinn Fein Assembly member John Kelly.

"She's more than capable of handling education. She'll prove the most able of all the Sinn Fein ministers."

Her biggest challenge will be securing a replacement for the 11-plus exam and winning unionist approval for it. She finds great joy in her daughters who, with their mother, play for the Newry and Warrenpoint Tennis Club. Like her predecessor in education, Martin McGuinness, she'll be great with children when visiting schools.

Ruane's constant complaints about the oppression of Northern nationalists led Ulster Unionist Danny Kennedy to ask why, if it was so bad, did she cross the border into the 'occupied six counties' every day. Now, as education minister, Caitriona Ruane has even more reason to make that trip.

C.V.

Born: 19 July 1962, Swinford, Co Mayo.

Married to: Brian McAteer, two daughters In the news: she has just become the North's new education minister