Michelle O'Neill (née Doris; born 10 January 1977)[1] is an Irish politician who has been First Minister of Northern Ireland since February 2024 and Vice President of Sinn Féin since 2018.

[8] Sinn Féin became the largest party after the 2022 Assembly election, putting O'Neill in line for the position of First Minister of Northern Ireland; however she did not take up the position until two years later because the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) refused to nominate a deputy First Minister, citing its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

[1] O'Neill became involved in republican politics in her teens,[10] assisting her father with constituency work in his role as a Dungannon councillor.

[11] She joined Sinn Féin after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, at the age of 21,[1][12] and started working as an advisor to Francie Molloy in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

She kept this role until 2005,[14] 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.

[15] O'Neill succeeded Michelle Gildernew as Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Northern Ireland Executive after the 2011 Assembly election.

[18] One of her key decisions in the role was the relocation of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development's headquarters from Belfast to a former British Army barracks in Ballykelly, County Londonderry in a bid to decentralise civil service jobs.

[1] In December 2013, the High Court quashed a decision by O'Neill to reallocate 7% of Common Agricultural Policy funds to rural development projects that had been favoured by environmentalists.

After eight days in office, she announced she would be scrapping the lifetime ban on gay and bisexual men donating blood in Northern Ireland.

[22] 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, O'Neill was chosen as Sinn Féin's new "party leader in the North".

[39] In August 2022, O'Neill was asked in a BBC interview whether it was right during The Troubles for the Provisional IRA "to engage in violent resistance to British rule".

[41] In September 2022, O'Neill broke with Republican tradition to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

[45][49][50][51] On 5 February, O'Neill held meetings with Rishi Sunak, Chris Heaton-Harris, Leo Varadkar and ministers of the Northern Ireland Executive.

High on the agenda is the request for additional financial support for the Northern Ireland government in excess of the £3.3 billion package already pledged from the HM Treasury.

[52] [53] In November 2024, O'Neill became the first senior Sinn Féin figure to take part in an official Remembrance Sunday ceremony, laying a laurel wreath at the Belfast Cenotaph at City Hall.

"[55] In May 2023, 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.