Fred Cobain

Fred Cobain, MBE (born 30 April 1946) is a Democratic Unionist Party politician from Northern Ireland and was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from 1998 until 2011.

Political career

Cobain was first elected to Belfast City Council in 1985. He served as Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1990-1991. He had been an Ulster Unionist Party Northern Ireland Assembly Member for North Belfast since 1998.

Cobain was Chair of the Assembly's Committee for Social Development and served two terms on the Northern Ireland Policing Board

On 29 December 2007 he was named MBE in the New Year Honours 2008.

After the Christmas 2010 water crisis, Cobain supported a vote of no confidence in Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy, saying "At the end of the day in all of these issues the individual who leads the department is responsible and I have to say if this was any other part of the UK, or any other part of these islands, the minister would have been away weeks ago...This minister doesn't appear to accept any responsibility for anything."