Edward Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond
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Edward Enda Haughey, Baron Ballyedmond, OBE (b. 5 January 1944) is an entrepreneur and politician. With an estimated personal wealth of £350m, he is the 2nd richest person in Northern Ireland, 7th richest in Ireland and the 174th richest person in the United Kingdom.
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[edit] Biography
Edward Haughey was born in Kilcurry, north of Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland on 1944 and educated by the Christian Brothers in Dundalk.[1][2][3] He married Mary Gordon Young in 1972, by whom he had two sons and a daughter.
Haughey emigrated to the United States for four years in the 1960s, but returned home and founded a veterinary pharmaceutical manufacturing business in 1968. He has been Chairman of Newry-based Norbrook Laboratories and Norbrook Holdings since 1980. Norbrook employs 1,300 people worldwide, 1,000 of them in Northern Ireland. He also started an air travel business principally Haughey Air, Carlisle Airport (sold to WA Developments in May 2006), and a helicopter charter company.
He owns Ballyedmond Castle in Rostrevor, County Down, Northern Ireland and Corby Castle in Cumbria, England.
[edit] Politics
Haughey was nominated to the Irish senate by the then Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, in 1994, and nominated again by Bertie Ahern in 1997. He has been a member of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation and the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body since 1997. In 2004, Haughey was made a life peer as Baron Ballyedmond of Mourne in the County of Down and sat in the British House of Lords on behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party, before switching to the Conservative Party[4].
Haughey had previously donated several million pounds to the Conservatives and had also been associated with the Republic of Ireland's Fianna Fáil party. Lord Ballyedmond is the second person to have sat in both the upper houses of the United Kingdom and post-independence Ireland after:
- 6th Marquess of Lansdowne in 1927
- 3rd Earl of Iveagh, who sat in the Seanad in the 1970s as a nominee of Liam Cosgrave but was not active in the House of Lords despite being entitled to sit there
On 16 August 2006, Irish police found an explosive device at a construction site for an estate Haughey was building in County Louth. The bomb appeared to consist of fertilizer-type explosive material weighing approximately 70lb. The illegal splinter group, the Real IRA has been active in the area recently and is considered a likely suspect.
Haughey has served as an Honorary Consul to the Republic of Chile.
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