Mulholland succeeded as
Baron Dunleath in 1956 and entered the
House of Lords. As Lord Dunleath, he became a
deputy lieutenant of
County Down and the commanding officer (lieutenant-colonel) of the
North Irish Horse in the
Territorial Army. In August 1967, he was appointed to the
BBC's board of governors, taking over from Richard Pim as governor for Northern Ireland. In the early 1970s, Dunleath was active in the
Ulster Defence Regiment and was an
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) member. However, he joined the
Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and was elected for the party in
North Down at the
1973 Northern Ireland Assembly election. He held the seat on the
Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. Dunleath was the only Alliance Party member in the House of Lords. While there, he strongly promoted the Education (Northern Ireland) Act, 1978, which permitted representatives of the
Roman Catholic church to take a role in the Protestant-dominated
state school system. He also attempted to introduce a bill to liberalise divorce law in Northern Ireland. Dunleath was chairman of a company which in 1979 bidded for the
Independent Television licence for Northern Ireland. In order to place the bid, he was required to resign from his party affiliation; having been elected to
Ards Borough Council in 1977, he thereafter sat as an Independent member and as a
crossbencher in the House of Lords. However, in 1981 he rejoined the Alliance Party in a personal capacity, and the following year successfully stood as an Alliance candidate in North Down at the
Northern Ireland Assembly election, serving for the entire four years of the revived Assembly's existence as both a representative (
MPA) and as the Assistant Speaker. On Dunleath's death from cancer in 1993,
his peerage passed to his first cousin Michael Mulholland. ==See also==