ALASDAIR MCDONNELL HAS been elected as the new leader of the SDLP.

Dr McDonnell will be the fifth person to serve as leader of the SDLP, following Gerry Fitt, John Hume, Mark Durkan and Margaret Ritchie – who has stepped down from the role to focus on her position as MP of South Down.

McDonnell secured victory over three party colleagues in the election: Patsy McGlone, Alex Attwood and Conall McDevitt.

Attwood was eliminated in the first count, followed by McGlone in the second. McDonell was elected on the third count, securing 188 votes to McDevitts’s 152, RTÉ reports.

Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Belfast today, McDonnell said: “This is the proudest moment of my political life”, reports UTV.

Politicians have expressed their support and congratulations for McDonnell tonight.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said that he was certain McDonnell was up to the challenge of rebuilding the party, which he said was a “big task”. Gilmore recognised the “great value” of the ties between his party and the SDLP and said he hoped they could both work towards “identifying opportunities for building North-South economic development”.

Similarly, Fianna Fáil Leader Micheál Martin TD congratulated McDonnell on his election, saying that he had worked closely with him over many years and knew McDonnell to be “a man of  great courage, integrity and commitment to the Irish people”. Martin said that the SDLP had played an enormously positive role in Northern Ireland over the years.