Carthy was born in Birmingham, England, in 1977. His mother is from County Monaghan and his father from County Roscommon. The family moved to County Roscommon when Carthy was aged two, where he lived until he was 10. His family then spent a year living in Holywell in north-east Wales before returning to Ireland to live in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan.
He has described the experience of living on the Irish border during the conflict as playing a formative role in shaping his republican political views, and cites hunger strikers Bobby Sands and Kieran Doherty as major influences.[4]
Carthy studied marketing for a year at the Dublin Institute of Technology, where he formed a Sinn Féin college cumann (branch) in 1996. Carthy was a founding member of Ógra Shinn Féin (a Sinn Féin youth organisation) the following year. He worked as a full-time youth organiser for Ógra in Dublin in Sinn Féin's party headquarters, and as a press officer for Sinn Féin.
Carthy lives in Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, with wife Lynn and their five children.
Political career
He was elected as the first Sinn Féin member of Carrickmacross Town Council in County Monaghan in 1999, becoming the youngest elected representative in the country (21 years old) at the time.
In June 2006, Carthy was elected as the first Sinn Féin Mayor of Carrickmacross Town Council. He was a member of Monaghan County Council from 2004 to 2014, and was elected mayor of Monaghan County Council in 2008.
In the European Parliament Carthy is a member of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee (AGRI) and the Special Committee on Financial Crimes, Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance (TAX3). He is a substitute member of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) and Transport and Tourism Committee (TRAN). He was a full member of the Panama Papers Committee of Inquiry for its duration from 2016 to 2017.
In 2015, he was appointed as Sinn Féin's Uniting Ireland project coordinator. He has been party whip in the European Parliament since 2014 and has been a member of the Ard Chomhairle (national executive) at regular intervals since 1998. He was the Sinn Féin Director of Elections for the 2016 general election.