Preceded by Sam Foster Nationality British Succeeded by John McCallister Role Politician | Preceded by New Creation Name Dermot Nesbitt Succeeded by Arlene Foster Spouse(s) Oriel (m.1970) | |
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Born 14 August 1947 (age 76)
Belfast, Northern Ireland ( 1947-08-14 ) Education Queen's University Belfast | ||
Political party Ulster Unionist Party | ||
Dermot Nesbitt (born 14 August 1947) is a politician from Northern Ireland.
Nesbitt was educated at Down High School and later studied economics at Queens University Belfast and joined the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). He was the election agent for Brian Faulkner from 1973–77, most of this period spent as a member of the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. Nesbitt worked as a lecturer at Queens and by 1981 he had rejoined the UUP, being elected to Down District Council. He held this seat until 1989.
Nesbitt was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum for South Down in 1996, and held this seat on the Northern Ireland Assembly at the 1998 and 2003 elections.
Nesbitt was a junior minister in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland from 1998 until 2002, when he took up the post of Minister of the Environment. He retired in 2007, and party colleague John McCallister retained a UUP seat in the South Down constituency. At the 1997, 2001 and 2005 general elections, Nesbitt stood unsuccessfully for the Westminster seat of South Down. He currently works as a lecturer in finance at QUB.
In mid-morning on 7 December 1983, while chatting to UUP party and Queen's colleague Edgar Graham at the University Square side of the main campus library, Graham (aged 29) was shot in the head a number of times by an IRA gunman and died almost instantly. Two persons were later convicted of withholding evidence from the police, but no one was ever convicted for Graham's murder.