Rosemary Barton (politician)

Margaret Elizabeth Rosemary Barton (born 26 July 1957) is an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician and former schoolteacher who was a Fermanagh and Omagh Councillor for the Mid Tyrone DEA from 2022 to 2023, having previously represented Erne North from 2014 to 2016. Barton was also a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 2016 to 2022.

Career
A native of Fermanagh, Barton worked as a secondary schoolteacher in Kesh. She was also a schoolteacher at Devenish College. During that time, she taught the future Northern Ireland national football team player Kyle Lafferty.

Political career
At the 2011 local elections, she was elected to Fermanagh District Council as an Ulster Unionist Party representative for the Erne North District.

She was elected to the successor Fermanagh and Omagh District Council at the 2014 local elections, again representing Erne North. Barton was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly at the 2016 election as the third woman elected to represent Fermanagh and South Tyrone alongside the First Minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster and Michelle Gildernew. Her election as an MLA meant that she was forced to vacate her seat on the District Council. Barton joined cross-community calls for an independent inquiry headed by the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland into the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal.

Barton retained her seat in the 2017 Assembly election, after Fermanagh and South Tyrone lost one seat, in common with all other constituencies, after the Assembly Members (Reduction of Numbers) Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 which led to the Democratic Unionist Party's Lord Morrow missing out. She would become the UUP's education spokesperson in the Assembly. During the 2018 Gaelic football season, Barton suggested Fermanagh GAA fans who "continually talk about the GAA team" in workplaces made unionist colleagues "apprehensive" and "uncomfortable" and amounted to "latent intimidation".

She lost her seat in the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election to running mate, Tom Elliott.

In November 2022 Barton was co-opted to Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, in the Mid Tyrone District, to replace UUP veteran, Bert Wilson.

Barton was defeated at the 2023 local elections, losing her seat to Shirley Hawkes of the DUP.

Personal life
After having qualified as a teacher, Barton joined the Young Farmers' Clubs of Ulster in 1980 and met her future husband there. They married in 1984 in the Church of Ireland church in Clones, County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland. Barton expressed surprise when she was informed by the Belfast Telegraph that Wikipedia had cited her age incorrectly in 2017.