In Profile: the new Ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly

Michelle O’Neill, First Minister

O’Neill, who was elected First Minister, has played a central role in Sinn Féin usurping the DUP as the largest party in Northern Ireland. She was anointed the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland as a seriously ill Martin McGuinness passed on the baton in 2017.

Already experienced as a minister she was fast-tracked by Gerry Adams and the late Martin McGuinness, quickly and quite smoothly finding her leadership legs despite some internal mutterings that the likes of Conor Murphy or John O’Dowd should have got the job.

The main controversy attached to her follows from her remarks last year that there was no alternative to the IRA campaign of violence during the Troubles, a position she still holds, and a view that continues to leave a sour taste in the mouth of unionists and quite a number of nationalists as well.

But equally she has an easy and affable personality. Her human touch was never more evident than when she showed warmth in expressing condolences to King Charles on the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth – an occasion at Hillsborough Castle when, with Jeffrey Donaldson also in attendance, the monarch tellingly noted that Sinn Féin was now “the biggest party”.

Children’s Books Ireland Awards 2024: Catfish Rolling, by Clara Kumagai, named book of the year

---

Why does Dublin Airport want to demolish North Terminal, an icon of Irish modernist architecture?

---

Landmark Baker’s Corner pub for sale with full planning for student accommodation scheme at €7m

---

“People think ‘there are hostages – it is what it is’. But there are families who cannot carry on with their lives”

---

O’Neill’s late father, Brendan Doris, was an IRA prisoner and later a Sinn Féin councillor. He died aged 54, with O’Neill taking over his Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council seat in 2005.

She believes her personality reflects his: “He was a very relaxed person. He never got over-excited about anything. I think I have certainly got a lot of his characteristics.”

In the Northern Executive she served as minister for agriculture and rural development and also as minister of health, in 2016 presenting the Bengoa Report, a 10-year plan on how to modernise the health system in Northern Ireland, and if health is to be reformed, it may need resurrecting.

Her task now is to help get powersharing working again and to strike a good relationship with Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly and to prove, as she has said from the start of her appointment as Sinn Féin vice-president in 2017, that she wants “to deliver for all citizens”.

Emma Little-Pengelly, Deputy First Minister

Little-Pengelly has been appointed alongside Michelle O’Neill as Deputy First Minister for Northern Ireland. This will give the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson time to mull over whether to stand down from the House of Commons in the next Westminster general election and move to Stormont as First Minister.

The 46-year-old MLA was co-opted to Lagan Valley in May 2022 to replace Donaldson who decided not to take his Stormont seat and to remain as an MP for the Lagan Valley constituency.

Donaldson could be co-opted back as an MLA if he doesn’t run again for the House of Commons.

Little-Pengelly is a daughter of Noel Little, who in 1989 was arrested in Paris, and later convicted, as part of an alleged plot to smuggle in arms from South Africa for the Ulster Resistance group.

Little-Pengelly has denounced paramilitarism and said her father’s arrest and absence from part of her childhood had a “profound” impact on her and her family.

She qualified as a barrister in 2003 and also lectured at the University of Ulster before taking up politics.

Like O’Neill in Sinn Féin, she too earned quick promotions within the DUP – although her career path has been more stop-start – winning the favour first of the late leader Ian Paisley, for whom she was a special adviser when he was First Minister from 2007.

She remained in that post for eight years when Peter Robinson took over as First Minister in 2008.

She was co-opted as MLA for South Belfast in 2015, succeeding the late Jimmy Spratt who had to retire due to health reasons, holding on to the seat in the 2016 election, but losing in the 2017 election when the constituency was reduced from six to five seats.

She was appointed a junior minister in 2015 and also served as chairwoman of the finance committee after the 2016 election.

She was elected MP for South Belfast in 2017, taking the seat from Dr Alasdair McDonnell, but two years later lost out to Claire Hanna for the SDLP. She was co-opted as an MLA for Lagan Valley in May 2022.

Similarly to O’Neill, she is personable and these two prospective leaders should have the capacity to strike up a collegiate and pragmatic relationship – although the same was said about O’Neill and Arlene Foster before that joint stewardship deteriorated.

Naomi Long, Justice Minister

Long has returned as the Minister of Justice.

Long has transformed the fortunes of Alliance, leapfrogging the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP to move from fifth to third place in party rankings in the Assembly.

No wonder the DUP and Sinn Féin are wary of her. Under her direction Alliance has increased the middle-ground vote, gaining support from centrist unionist and nationalist voters alike.

The justice portfolio, because it is such a sensitive department, requires a cross-community vote.

Long, in her career, has served as a Belfast councillor, an MLA, and MP and an MEP, her biggest political scalp winning East Belfast in the Westminster election of 2010 and, astonishingly at the time, unseating the DUP leader Peter Robinson.

Conor Murphy, Economy Minister

Conor Murphy, who has served both as an MP and MLA for Newry and Armagh, had the pick of the two plum departments, the economy and finance.

Having served as finance minister, the expectation was that he would opt for the economy job, a key post now that Northern Ireland will have access to both the UK and EU markets, and likely to become an attractive destination for foreign direct investment.

Murphy (60) was sentenced to five years in prison in 1982 for IRA membership and possession of explosives.

He was embroiled in controversy over claims that 21-year-old Paul Quinn, who was brutally beaten to death in 2007 by a suspected IRA gang, was linked to criminality, comments that he finally apologised for and retracted in 2020.

Murphy is viewed as an able and pragmatic politician who can work with all parties, is an effective minister and can strike deals.

Gordon Lyons, Communities Minister

With Conor Murphy taking economy, it was thought that the outgoing DUP economy minister Gordon Lyons would opt for finance. However, he has landed in the “communities” portfolio.

The 38-year-old is one of those who has quickly shot up the DUP promotion ladder and is viewed as a capable, reflective and efficient politician.

He was first elected as a councillor for the Mid and East Antrim Council in 2014. The following year he succeeded Sammy Wilson as the MLA for East Antrim as Wilson chose to hold on to his East Antrim House of Commons seat.

He was appointed a junior minister in the Executive in 2020 and when Edwin Poots temporarily stepped down as minister of agriculture for health reasons, he took over that role. He also served as a DUP chief whip.

He was appointed economy minister in 2021 after Jeffrey Donaldson took over as DUP leader. He is considered a solid supporter of Donaldson.

Paul Givan, Education Minister

Former DUP First Minister Paul Givan was thought to be in line for the health ministry. That would have represented a big change in Northern Ireland politics as mostly health was the last portfolio chosen because it was seen as a poisoned chalice.

However, Robin Swann of the Ulster Unionist Party made such a success of the department in the previous Executive, particularly in his management of Covid, that many felt that department was his to lose.

Givan is 42 and is now an experienced politician, having served as First Minister, albeit for just over half a year from 2021 into 2022, and also as communities minister from 2016 to 2017. He was previously DUP spokesman on health.

The late Martin McGuinness said Givan’s decision to scrap a £55,000 grant to the Líofa Gaeltacht bursary scheme, designed to help people from a disadvantaged background travel to Donegal to learn Irish, was the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, in terms of McGuinness’s decision in 2017 to bring down that powersharing administration for three years.

The DUP privately acknowledged it acted in a ham-fisted manner in that and other matters in terms of its relationship with Sinn Féin.

Robin Swann, Health Minister

Swann returns to health after he proved an effective minister of health during the Covid crisis.

Swann, who was first elected as an MLA in 2011, became the unopposed UUP leader six years later. But that did not go well and he resigned in November 2019.

He took over health in 2020 as Covid spread across Northern Ireland. The public was impressed with his handling of the pandemic to the extent that when he stood in the 2022 Assembly election, he topped the poll.

Modest and diligent, a mark of his popularity was his jointly being awarded the UK Politician of the Year in 2022 by Civility in Politics.

Caoimhe Archibald, Finance Minister

A rising star in Sinn Féin, Archibald has been an East Derry MLA since 2016, and has taken the plum role of Finance Minister.

She grew up in Coleraine and holds a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in molecular microbiology.

Close to Northern party leader Michelle O’Neill, Archibald was appointed spokeswoman on the Executive office last year as part of a reshuffle of Sinn Féin’s Assembly team in preparation for a “possible return” to powersharing.

She was appointed chair of the Stormont economy in 2020 and acted as a party spokeswoman on economy and climate change.

A republican activist for more than 15 years, she worked alongside her father, Ciaran, a Sinn Féin councillor, in his constituency office when she was younger. Just days before the Westminster elections in 2015 – when she stood as a first-time candidate – she received a death threat from loyalists.

Her sister, Niamh, became the first Sinn Féin member to win in a council seat in the Coleraine area in May’s local government elections.

John O’Dowd, Minister for Infrastructure

Sinn Féin’s O’Dowd is a former Minister of Education in the Northern Executive, and enjoys senior standing within his party.

He stood against Michelle O’Neill for the post of vice-president of Sinn Féin in 2019. That move came in the wake of Sinn Féin’s poor performance in the European and local council elections in the Republic in May.

He was viewed at the time as a political threat to O’Neill. He has said his politics are defined by the 1981 Maze hunger strikes in which 10 men died.

The former chef, a native of Banbridge, Co Down was first elected to the Northern Assembly in 2003. He served as Minister for Education from 2011 until 2016.

Another measure of his prominence within Sinn Féin is reflected in the fact that when Martin McGuinness unsuccessfully ran for the Irish presidency in 2011, O’Dowd was selected to stand in for him as Deputy First Minister. He held that post for six weeks alongside DUP First Minister Peter Robinson.

Andrew Muir, Agriculture and Environment Minister

Muir has served as an Alliance Party MLA since late 2019. He is also the party’s chief whip, and has been focused upon reform and restoration of Belfast Agreement institutions. He has also served on public accounts and infrastructure committees.

Muir was previously mayor of North Down in 2013/14, and councillor for the Holywood area since 2010 before joining the Assembly.

Born and bred in North Down, he lives locally with his constituency office based in Holywood Town Centre.

He serves on the board of governors of Priory Integrated College, Holywood, as well as Rathmore Primary School, Bangor.

He comes from a strong businesses background having previously worked with Translink on a number of multimillion pound projects.

He describes himself as “a keen runner”. He founded both Bangor and Crawfordsburn park runs and has completed ten marathons with an impressive personal best time of three hours and seven minutes.

He is also vice-president of North Down Athletic Club and event director of Crawfordsburn Country parkrun.

• Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
• Find The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
• Our In The News podcast is now published daily – Find the latest episode here