Michelle O'Neill is an Irish politician who served as deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland between 2020 and 2022.
21 Facts About Michelle O'Neill
2.
Michelle O'Neill has been serving as Vice President of Sinn Fein since 2018 and is the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Mid Ulster since 2007.
3.
Michelle O'Neill served as the first female Mayor of Dungannon and South Tyrone from 2010 to 2011.
4.
Michelle O'Neill automatically relinquished her office following Paul Givan's resignation as first minister on 3 February 2022.
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Michelle O'Neill was born in Fermoy, County Cork, Republic of Ireland.
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Michelle O'Neill comes from an Irish republican family in Clonoe, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.
7.
Michelle O'Neill's father Brendan Doris was a Provisional IRA prisoner and Sinn Fein councillor.
8.
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.
13.
Michelle O'Neill was elected as an MLA for Mid Ulster in the 2007 Assembly election, succeeding her Sinn Fein colleague Geraldine Dougan.
14.
Michelle O'Neill replaced the Democratic Unionist Party's Simon Hamilton as Minister of Health following the 2016 election.
15.
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.
16.
In January 2017, when Martin McGuinness resigned as deputy First Minister in protest against 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".
17.
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.
18.
In January 2020, Michelle O'Neill was appointed deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland.
19.
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.
20.
In February 2022, Michelle O'Neill lost her position as deputy First Minister with the resignation of Paul Givan as First Minister.
21.
However, Michelle O'Neill remains to be officially sworn in as First Minister because, as part of its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the DUP has refused to nominate a deputy First minister and there is therefore no functioning executive of Northern Ireland.