1. Michelle O'Neill is an Irish politician who has been First Minister of Northern Ireland since February 2024 and Vice President of Sinn Fein since 2018.
32 Facts About Michelle O'Neill
1. 2.
Michelle O'Neill has been the MLA for Mid Ulster in the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2007.
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Michelle O'Neill served on the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council from 2005 to 2011.
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Michelle O'Neill served as the first female Mayor of Dungannon and South Tyrone from 2010 to 2011.
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Michelle O'Neill has been serving as Vice President of Sinn Fein since 2018.
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Michelle O'Neill automatically relinquished her office following Paul Givan's resignation as first minister on 3 February 2022.
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On 3 February 2024, Michelle O'Neill was appointed First Minister of Northern Ireland.
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Michelle O'Neill was born in Fermoy, a town in County Cork, Republic of Ireland.
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Michelle O'Neill comes from an Irish republican family in Clonoe, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.
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Michelle O'Neill's father Brendan Doris was a Provisional IRA prisoner and Sinn Fein councillor.
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Michelle O'Neill's uncle Paul Doris is a former national president of the Irish Northern Aid Committee.
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Michelle O'Neill subsequently began to train as an accounting technician, before pursuing a political career.
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Michelle O'Neill became involved in republican politics in her teens, assisting her father with constituency work in his role as a Dungannon councillor.
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Michelle O'Neill joined Sinn Fein after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, at the age of 21, and started working as an advisor to Francie Molloy in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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Michelle O'Neill kept this role until 2005, when she was elected to represent the Torrent electoral area on Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council, taking the seat which had been vacated by her father.
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Michelle O'Neill was elected as an MLA for Mid Ulster in the 2007 Assembly election, succeeding her Sinn Fein colleague Geraldine Dougan.
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Michelle O'Neill replaced the DUP's Simon Hamilton as Minister of Health following the 2016 election.
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On 25 October 2016, Michelle O'Neill unveiled a document titled Health and Wellbeing 2026: Delivering Together, a ten-year plan which is based on the findings of the Bengoa Report and aims to modernise the health and social care system.
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In January 2017, when Martin McGuinness resigned as deputy First Minister in protest at the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, and said that he would not stand in the resulting snap election, Michelle O'Neill was chosen as Sinn Fein's new "party leader in the North".
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In February 2018, Michelle O'Neill became vice president of Sinn Fein, succeeding Mary Lou McDonald, who became president following the retirement of Gerry Adams.
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In January 2020, Michelle O'Neill was appointed deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.
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Michelle O'Neill automatically lost her position on 14 June 2021 when Arlene Foster resigned as First Minister, and regained it three days later when she and Paul Givan were nominated as deputy First Minister and First Minister respectively on 17 June 2021.
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In February 2022, Michelle O'Neill lost her position as deputy First Minister with the resignation of Paul Givan as First Minister.
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However, Michelle O'Neill did not take up the position until February 2024 because, as part of its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the DUP refused to nominate a deputy First minister and there was therefore no functioning executive of Northern Ireland.
25.
In September 2022, Michelle O'Neill broke with Republican tradition to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
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Michelle O'Neill assumed office on 3 February 2024, becoming the first ever Irish nationalist, republican or Catholic to hold that position.
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Michelle O'Neill pledged in her speech to represent all and to show respect to the royal family.
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In November 2024, Michelle O'Neill became the first senior Sinn Fein figure to take part in an official Remembrance Sunday ceremony, laying a laurel wreath at the Belfast Cenotaph at City Hall.
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In May 2023, Michelle O'Neill pursued a libel action against former DUP councillor John Carson for defamation; this followed a comment he had made on social media in April 2021 and for which he later apologised.
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Michelle O'Neill became pregnant at the age of 16 and gave birth to her daughter at the same age.
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Michelle O'Neill has said she was prayed over at school when she became pregnant.
32.
Michelle O'Neill married Paddy O'Neill when she was 18 and they have two children together.