Background
Liam Aylward was born in Mullinavat, County Kilkenny in 1952.
Liam Aylward was born in Mullinavat, County Kilkenny in 1952.
He was educated at Street Kierans College, Kilkenny.
He worked as a laboratory technician before getting involved in politics. He was elected to Kilkenny County Council in 1974, serving on that authority until 1992. Aylward was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil Territorial Decoration for the Carlow–Kilkenny constituency at the 1977 general election in what proved to be a landslide for Fianna Fáil.
Since then he has served as Minister of State at the Department of Energy (1988–1989), at the Department of Education (1992–1994) and at the Department of Agriculture and Food (2002–2004).
In 1998 Aylward was the subject of a complaint to Oireachtas authorities for groping a female usher in the Dáil bar, for which he apologised. In 2004 he was elected to the European Parliament in the East constituency for Fianna Fáil, which was then part of the Union for a Europe of Nations.
Since the 2009 European Parliament election, Fianna Fáil is affiliated with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). He is the son of the Bob Aylward who served as a Fianna Fáil senator
Aylward has opted not to receive a ministerial pension but still receives annual pension payments of around €50,000 from his time as a Territorial Decoration. He retired from politics at the 2014 European Parliament election.
He was a Teachta Dála (Territorial Decoration) for the Carlow–Kilkenny constituency from 1977 to 2007, and an ALDE Member of the European Parliament (Member of the European Parliament) for the East constituency from 2004 to 2014,
Aylward is a member of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, the delegation for relations with Mercosur and the delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly. Aylward is also a substitute member of the Committee on Culture and Education and the delegation to the American College of Physicians–European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly. Because dual mandate legislation forbids Members of the European Parliament from seeking re-election as members of their national legislatures, Liam Aylward retired from national politics at the 2007 general election.