Eileen Paisley, Baroness Paisley of St George's
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Eileen Emily Paisley, Baroness Paisley of St George's (née Cassells) (b. 1934, Belfast) is a Northern Irish Unionist politician, a vice-president of the Democratic Unionist Party, and the wife of Ian Paisley, Leader of the DUP. She became a life peer in 2006.
Eileen Cassells married Ian Richard Kyle Paisley on 13 October 1956. They have five children, twin sons, Kyle and Ian (the former a church minister, the latter a DUP assemblyman), a daughter Rhonda (a graduate of Bob Jones University, who served as a member of Belfast City Council but has long since left politics), and two further daughters.
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, although she is sitting as a cross-bencher in the House of Lords. She was gazetted as Baroness Paisley of St George's, of St George's in County Antrim, after the ward that she represented on Belfast City Council, on 14 June 2006, and was introduced to the House of Lords on 3 July 2006.[1] She and her husband are one of four married couples with one spouse in the House of Commons and the other in the House of Lords.