Kieran Deeny

Kieran Deeny (born October 12 1954) is a Northern Irish medical doctor turned politician, and an independent Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for West Tyrone, having run on a single issue ticket of retaining the Tyrone County Hospital in Omagh.

Born in Downpatrick, Deeny was educated at St. Patrick's Boy's Primary School and St. Patrick's De La Salle Grammar School, both in Downpatrick. During this time he regularly partipated in several sports, representing Ulster Schools at Table Tennis, representing County Down in the Gaelic Athletic Association and playing football in both the Irish League and League of Ireland in the early 1970s.

He studied at University College Dublin and worked as a general practitioner in County Tyrone from the mid 1980s onwards. From 2000 he also served as Chairman of Omagh and District G.P. Association and took a prominent role in the campaign to keep full medical provision at the Tyrone County Hospital.

In the 2003 Northern Ireland assembly elections Deeny ran as an independent candidate in West Tyrone on the sole issue of retaining the hospital and generated one of the biggest shocks of that election when he topped the poll and took a seat from the Social Democratic and Labour Party. However the continued suspension of the Assembly has meant that Deeny has not been able to directly influence decisions about the future of the hospital. He lost popularity in some quarters due to the fact that his election posters remained on street lamposts well over a year after the election. His election posters for the March 2007 campaign are also among the only ones not to be removed in the area.

In the 2005 general election Deeny stood for the Westminster seat, campaigning heavily on sitting MP Pat Doherty's abstentionism and arguing that this denied the seat a voice, and received a lot of backing from many activists and supporters of both Nationalist and Unionist political parties, though all the major parties ran candidates. Deeny received over 11,000 votes and placed second in the election to Pat Doherty. In the 2007 Assembly elections Deeny was elected on the seventh count with 3,776 first preference votes. His campaign was again largely based on a single issue, this time being the impending closure of the Sion Mills branch surgery. However it looks as though this will be another failed campaign.

He will be sitting with the Alliance Party and the Green Party's Brian Wilson as " United Community MLAs".

In the first two months since the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Doctor Deeny has claimed £13,863.37 in expenses (which averages out to approx. £1732.92 per week over 8 weeks) and is the second highest expenses claim for an MLA.