She stood again at the 2002 general election. Her first preference vote increased to 4,679 (9.4%), and she was elected to Dáil Éireann, finishing 54 votes ahead of a Fianna Fáil candidate for the final seat, having edged out the sitting Fine Gael TD, Louis Belton, by just over 200 votes at an earlier stage in the count. Her election in 2002, in a predominantly rural midland constituency for a party often associated with the urban middle classes was one of the major surprises of that election, and came after a series of near misses from elimination during the progress of the election count.