O'Lynn ran as the Alliance Party candidate for North Antrim in the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election, but was unsuccessful.[7] In September 2017, O'Lynn met with Kate Nicholl, then an Alliance councillor on Belfast City Council, who encouraged her to join Alliance and run as a candidate.[8] She was an Alliance candidate again later that year, this time for the 2017 UK general election, running in North Antrim. She came fifth, with 2,723 votes, maintaining Alliance's percentage share of the vote from the previous general election.[9]
Later that year, at the 2019 general election, O'Lynn was again the Alliance candidate for the parliamentary constituency of North Antrim. She polled 6,231 votes, taking third place, and increased her share of the vote by 8.5%.[11]
On 7 May 2022, O'Lynn was elected as the first ever Alliance MLA and the first woman to represent North Antrim in the Northern Ireland Assembly. She was elected on the sixth stage of the count, defeating incumbent DUP MLA Mervyn Storey by a margin of 288 votes - the third tightest margin of victory in Northern Ireland.[13] Her election was considered an upset in the staunchly unionist constituency of North Antrim with BelfastLive describing it as a "seismic shift".[14] In her victory speech, O'Lynn said that the "age of entitlement is over" for DUP dominance in the constituency.[15]Jim Allister, on the other hand, said that Mervyn Storey's loss was a "matter of great sadness to me that his seat has been taken by the crypto-nationalist Alliance Party".[16]
On 22 February 2023, O'Lynn announced that she would resign from Stormont on 31 March to take up a job at Queen's University Belfast.[17] O'Lynn said that it "has been an honour to serve the people of North Antrim" but regrets that she could not "do so in the Assembly chamber itself due to the ongoing impasse, which has proved frustrating".[18] Former MLA Mervyn Storey, who lost his seat to O'Lynn, questioned her "commitment" to North Antrim.[19] O'Lynn responded that Storey "desperately needs" a hug.[20] On 16 March, two weeks before leaving office, O'Lynn shared a new personal website that describes her as a keynote speaker, author and coach.[21]
The vacant position created from Lynn's resignation was filled by the co-option of Sian Mulholland, an Alliance councillor on Lisburn and Castlereagh Council.[22] Mulholland was previously co-opted onto Lisburn and Castlereagh Council in 2022 to fill David Honeyford's vacancy following his election to the Assembly and Mulholland also served on Belfast City Council from 2015 to 2022.[23]
Personal life
In 2021, O'Lynn completed doctoral research at Queen’s University Belfast. Her doctoral thesis was titled 'Mainstreams, Margins and the Spaces In-Between: Youth Experiences of School Exclusion in Northern Ireland' and focused on young people’s experiences of exclusion from school within Northern Ireland. She also received the Sir Tomas Dixon Award and the Department for Economy doctoral scholarship.[24] O'Lynn officially graduated from Queen's University Belfast with a PhD on 2 July 2022.[25][26]
