After serving as Deputy First Minister from 2020 to 2022, Irish politician Michelle O’Neill has been the First Minister of Northern Ireland since 2024. She has been a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) representing Mid Ulster since 2007 and has served as vice president of Sinn Féin since 2018.

From 2005 until 2011, O’Neill was a member of the Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council. From 2010 to 2011, she held the distinction of becoming the first female mayor of Dungannon and South Tyrone. She was chosen to serve as Mid Ulster’s representative in the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007. She was appointed Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development to the Northern Ireland Executive in 2011 by Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. She received a promotion to Minister of Health in 2016. Following the restoration of the power-sharing executive under the New Decade, New Approach agreement, she was appointed Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland in January 2020.

On February 3, 2022, O’Neill automatically resigned from her position as first minister following Paul Givan’s resignation. After the 2022 Assembly election, Sinn Féin emerged as the largest party, placing O’Neill in a position to become Northern Ireland’s first minister. However, she has not assumed the role because the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has declined to nominate a deputy first minister, citing its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol.

O’Neill was named Northern Ireland’s first minister on February 3, 2024. This was the first time the position had been held by an Irish republican.