Sinn Féin is set to run John Finucane, a son of the murdered solicitor Pat Finucane, as its candidate in North Belfast for next month’s Westminster elections.
He will contest the seat held by Democratic Unionist Nigel Dodds since 2001 but it is also the constituency where Sinn Féin and the SDLP took 3 of the five seats in the March Assembly election, compared to the DUP’s 2.
Like his late father, Mr Finucane is a solicitor and has his own legal firm in Belfast.
The 37-year-old is a former Antrim goalkeeper and has strong GAA connections.
He is to replace 64-year-old Gerry Kelly, a Sinn Féin Assembly member for North Belfast, who has unsuccessfully contested the Westminster seat five times since 1997.
The Sinn Féin move is further evidence of a generational shift within the party.
A decision is expected within the next 48 hours as to whether 72-year-old Pat Doherty will seek re-election in the West Tyrone constituency, where he has been the MP since 2001.
In January, 40-year-old Michelle O’Neill became the party’s leader in Northern Ireland, after the late Martin McGuinness retired for health reasons.
The Sinn Féin decision to ratify Mr Finucane as its candidate in North Belfast will be taken at a constituency convention tomorrow night.
It will be a formality as he is expected to be the only candidate.
Mr Dodd’s first won what is traditionally a unionist North Belfast Westminster seat in 2001 and has held it in the four general elections since then.
The closest Sinn Féin came to ousting him was in 2010 when he had more than 2,000 votes to spare over Mr Kelly.
Mr Dodds had a comfortable margin of more than 5,000 votes in the last Westminster elections, two years ago.
Mr Finucane was nine years old in February 1989 when his father was shot dead and his mother wounded by loyalist gunmen at their family home in north Belfast.
The family has, to date, failed in its campaign to have the British government sanction a full public inquiry into the killing.
An investigation into the controversy by British QC Desmond de Silva concluded in 2012 that the actions of a number of state employees had furthered and facilitated the shooting but found no evidence of an overarching conspiracy by the authorities to target Pat Finucane.
At the time the then British prime minister, David Cameron, made a statement in the House of Commons, apologising to the Finucane family.
John Finucane has an older brother, Michael, and a sister, Katherine.
Meanwhile, the Ulster Unionist party has confirmed that its former leader, Mike Nesbitt, is to contest the Strangford constituency in the Westminster elections.
The seat is currently held by the DUP's Jim Shannon, who won it in 2010 after Iris Robinson stepped aside, and he retained his seat in the last Westminister contest two years ago.
Mr Nesbitt, 59, resigned as UUP leader following the party's poor performance in the March Assembly elections.
