Eileen Paisley, Baroness Paisley of St George's

Eileen Emily Paisley, Baroness Paisley of St George's, Baroness Bannside (; born 2 November 1931), is a Northern Irish Unionist politician from Belfast. She is the widow of Ian Paisley, Lord Bannside. Baroness Paisley became a life peer in 2006 and retired from the House of Lords on 30 October 2017. She is a vice-president of the Democratic Unionist Party.

Early life

Eileen Cassells came from the well-to-do Sandown Road area of East Belfast. Her family were originally of the Presbyterian faith but became members of the Baptist Church after a disagreement with their minister. Cassells had three elder siblings, all of whom died of scarlet fever before her birth. She worked as a shorthand typist prior to her marriage to the Rev. Ian Richard Kyle Paisley on 13 October 1956, by which stage she had converted to Free Presbyterianism. Among the congregation was Roman Catholic Falls Road girl Maura Lyons whose conversion to Free Presbyterianism and subsequent disappearance had Northern Ireland spellbound for several months.

The Paisleys had five children together, daughters Sharon, Rhonda (a graduate of Bob Jones University who served as a member of Belfast City Council) and Cherith, and twin sons Kyle and Ian (the former a Free Presbyterian minister, the latter a former DUP MP).

Career

Eileen Paisley was elected as a councillor in Belfast in 1967 for the Protestant Unionist Party, the forerunner to the DUP, three years before her husband was elected to Stormont and Westminster. She was also elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 and the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention in 1975, representing Belfast East both times.

It was announced on 11 April 2006 that she would be one of the first three members of the DUP to be created a life peer. She was gazetted on 14 June 2006 as Baroness Paisley of St George's, of St George's in the County of Antrim, after the ward that she represented on Belfast City Council. She was introduced to the House of Lords on 3 July 2006. In June 2010, she gained the additional title of Lady Bannside, of North Antrim in the County of Antrim, when her husband was also elevated to the peerage as Ian chose not to be titled "Lord Paisley" on the grounds that it would have devalued Eileen's title if he had. From 6 June 2013, Paisley was on a leave of absence from the House of Lords before retiring in October 2017.

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