website predecessor successor birth_place imagesize nationality party office birth_date image article_title name
-lsb- http://www.sinnfein.ie/contents/14971 francie molloy mla -rsb- -lsb- http://www.franciemolloy.ie/] office created ian milne county tyrone , northern ireland 150px irish sinn féin member of parliament 16 december 1950 franciemolloy.jpg francie molloy
 francie molloy
francie molloy

francie molloy -lrb- ; born 16 december 1950 -rrb- is a sinn féin politician who has been the member of parliament for mid ulster since 2013 and the member of the northern ireland assembly for mid ulster since 1998 .
he first stood for sinn féin in fermanagh and south tyrone in the 1982 assembly elections , finishing sixth in the five-seat constituency .
he was then elected to dungannon council in 1985 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 .
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 .
in december 2012 , molloy 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 .
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 ` eric ' 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 .
molloy denied the allegations at the time , and challenged anyone to repeat them outside of parliament so that he could take legal action -lrb- the original speech being subject to parliamentary privilege and thus not actionable -rrb- .
the uup leader mike nesbitt said he had been unaware of the speech and that it had played no part in lutton 's selection .
lutton also denied the claims were behind his decision to stand .
