| Rosie McCorley | |
| Constituency Am: | Belfast West |
| Assembly: | Northern Ireland |
| Term Start: | 2 July 2012 |
| Term End: | May 2016 |
| Predecessor: | Paul Maskey |
| Successor: | Gerry Carroll |
| Birth Date: | 14 January 1957 [1] |
| Birth Place: | Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Party: | Sinn Féin |
| Alma Mater: | Open University University of Ulster Queen's University Belfast |
Rosaleen "Rosie" McCorley (born 14 January 1957) is a former Irish Sinn Féin politician who was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Belfast West from 2012 to 2016.[2]
A former housing officer, in 1991, McCorley was jailed for 66 years for the attempted murder of an army officer and possession of explosives.[3] While in prison she obtained a first-class honours degree in social sciences with the Open University.
She served eight years of her sentence before being released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.[4] She was the first female prisoner to be released following the agreement.[3] After her release, she worked for Coiste na nIarchimí, an Irish republican ex-prisoners’ group, for eight years, before taking up a post as political adviser with Sinn Féin in 2007 working with MLAs Fra McCann and Pat Sheehan.[5]
In July 2012, she replaced her party colleague Paul Maskey, an abstentionist MP in the parliament of the United Kingdom, who had resigned from the Northern Ireland Assembly as part of Sinn Féin's policy of abolishing double jobbing.
McCorley lost her seat at the 2016 Assembly election.[6]
She holds a diploma in Irish from the University of Ulster and a post-graduate diploma in Gaeilge agus Léann an Aistriúcháin from Queen's University Belfast.[2]