Francie Molloy

Francie Molloy MP
Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster
Incumbent
Assumed office 7 March 2013
Preceded by	Martin McGuinness
Majority	13,617 (33.3%)
Principal Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly
In office 28 June 2011 – 15 April 2013
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Mitchel McLaughlin
Member of the Legislative Assembly for Mid Ulster
In office 25 June 1998 – 8 April 2013[1]
Preceded by	Office created
Succeeded by	Ian Milne
Personal details
Born	(1950-12-16) 16 December 1950[2] County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Political party	Sinn Féin
Website	Francie Molloy MLA website

Francie Molloy (Irish: Proinsias Ó Maolmhuaidh; born 16 December 1950) is a Sinn Féin politician who has been the abstentionist Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster since 2013. He was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Mid Ulster from 1998 to 2013.^[3]

He first stood for Sinn Féin in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in the 1982 Assembly Elections, finishing sixth in the five-seat constituency.^[4] He was then elected to Dungannon council in 1985^[5] representing the Torrent electoral area, centred on Coalisland. He retired from the council in 1989 but was re-elected in 1993, and has been a councillor since then.

Molloy stood unsuccessfully for Sinn Féin in the European election, 1994.^[6]

Molloy was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum in 1996 representing Mid-Ulster and then for the same constituency to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998, 2003 and 2007. In 2005, Molloy was temporarily suspended from Sinn Féin after publicly disagreeing with the party policy on eliminating many district councils, including the Dungannon Council of which he was a member.^[7]

In December 2012, he was selected as the Sinn Féin candidate for the UK parliamentary constituency of Mid-Ulster, which had been held by his party colleague Martin McGuinness since the 1997 General election.^[8] The by election took place on 7 March 2013.

In the run-up to the election, media attention focussed on past allegations about Molloy and how they related to the DUP/UUP-supported independent candidate Nigel Lutton – in 2007, DUP MP David Simpson had claimed during a debate in the Westminster parliament that Molloy had been a member of the IRA and was suspected by police of being involved in the fatal shooting of Lutton's father, Frederick Lutton, on 1 May 1979. The IRA had taken responsibility for it on the basis he was an RUC reservist. The investigation came to nothing, and Simpson claimed this was because Molloy was subsequently coerced into becoming a police informant, providing information that helped break up the IRA's East Tyrone brigade.^[9] Molloy denied the allegations at the time, and challenged anyone to repeat them outside of Parliament so he could take legal action (the original speech being subject to parliamentary privilege and thus not actionable).

UUP leader Mike Nesbitt said he had been unaware of the speech and that it had played no part in Lutton's selection.^[10] Lutton denied the claims were behind his decision to stand.^[11]

In the aftermath of the British vote to launch air strikes in Syria against Islamic State he caused controversy by stating, "'Brits back to what they do best, Murder.' He and Sinn Féin refused to apologise."^[12]

References

External links

• Profile from Sinn Féin website
• Profile from Northern Ireland Assembly website