Renowned author, journalist and feminist activist Nell McCafferty has died at the age of 80.

Her family said she died in the early hours of Wednesday at a nursing home in Co Donegal.

The former Irish Times journalist, originally from Londonderry , was a prominent voice on women's rights issues across the island of Ireland and in 1970 co-founded the Irish Women's Liberation Movement .

Considered a journalistic trailblazer and fearless social commentator, McCafferty wrote several books and also wrote for publications including the Sunday Tribune and Hot Press .

Ireland's Press Ombudsman, journalist Susan McKay , paid tribute.

"She was an absolutely wonderful journalist, a really ground-breaking journalist," Ms McKay told BBC Radio Ulster.

"She changed the way that all of us who came after her wrote journalism and did journalism, because she went straight to people.

"You know, if you look back at journalism before Nell, and indeed before some other brilliant woman of her generation, ordinary people were never asked for their opinion. They were written about by gents who thought that they knew how best to analyse society.

"Nell went straight into working-class places, she talked to people who had experienced real hardships and afflictions in their lives, and she brought their voices alive.

"She was tremendously brave and courageous and she wrote about all of the most important stories of her time.

"And it's very, very sad that she has died, but she had been very ill for quite a number of years, and, you know, wasn't really in a position to appreciate life to the same extent as she had been before."

SDLP leader and Foyle MP Colum Eastwood described McCafferty as "a mould-breaker and establishment shaker".

"She spoke truth to power like only a Derry woman could," he said on X, formerly Twitter.

"An icon for so many people across Ireland . Nell will be sadly missed, but her activism will endure."

Leader of the Irish Labour Party Ivana Bacik said she is "deeply saddened".

She described McCafferty as a "wonderful, fearless and unique feminist icon".

"It was an honour and a privilege to have known Nell, and to have had such fun with her over the years. Deep sympathies to all her family and friends," she posted on X.

In a piece published in the Irish Times earlier this year to mark McCafferty's 80th birthday, President of Ireland Michael D Higgins hailed her "enduring courage" as a writer.

"Those who have had Nell as a friend and an ally are very fortunate in their being given the gift of experiencing humanity in all its possibilities and vulnerabilities, and delivered as she did it with a sense of humour that paid tribute to the authenticity of her Derry upbringing," he wrote.