Arlene Isobel Foster, Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (née Kelly; born 17 July 1970), is a British broadcaster and politician from Northern Ireland who has been the chair of Intertrade UK since September 2024. She previously served as First Minister of Northern Ireland from 2016 to 2017 and 2020 to 2021 and leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from 2015 to 2021. She was the first woman to hold either position. She is a Member of the House of Lords, having previously been a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Fermanagh and South Tyrone from 2003 to 2021.
Foster served in the Northern Ireland Executive as Minister of the Environment from 2007 to 2008, Minister for Enterprise and Investment from 2008 to 2015 and Minister for Finance and Personnel from 2015 to 2016. In December 2015, she was elected unopposed to succeed Peter Robinson as leader of the DUP. In January 2016, she became First Minister of Northern Ireland and shared power with Martin McGuinness.
McGuinness resigned as deputy First Minister in January 2017 amid the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal, which involved a green energy scheme that Foster had set up during her time as Minister for Enterprise and Investment. The scheme was set to cost the taxpayer £490 million and there were allegations of corruption surrounding Foster's role in its implementation. McGuinness asked Foster to step aside as First Minister while her involvement in the scheme was investigated, but she refused to step aside or resign and said that those calling for her resignation were "misogynists and male chauvinists". Under the terms of the Northern Ireland power-sharing agreement, the First and deputy First Ministers are equal and, therefore, Foster could not remain in her post as First Minister and was subsequently removed from office. McGuinness's resignation caused a 2017 snap assembly election to be held, in which the DUP lost 10 seats. After no party received an outright majority in the 2017 general election, the DUP entered into an agreement with the Conservative Party to support Prime Minister Theresa May's government. In January 2020, she became First Minister of Northern Ireland again after the executive was reinstated under the terms of the New Decade, New Approach agreement.
On 28 April 2021, after more than 20 DUP MLAs and four DUP MPs signed a letter of no confidence in her leadership, Foster announced that she would resign as party leader and as First Minister. She was succeeded by Edwin Poots as DUP leader on 28 May 2021. Foster left office as First Minister on 14 June 2021 and was succeeded by Paul Givan as First Minister on 17 June 2021. She resigned from the Northern Ireland Assembly in October 2021 and became a presenter on GB News.
In May 2024, Foster was appointed chair of Intertrade UK, a new body to promote trade within the UK which was announced as part of the UK government package to restore devolution. She assumed the role on 19 September 2024.https://x.com/NI_Elects/status/1836789111966859368?t=ckJITayjUzmEfrECsA2zLA&s=19
Background
Arlene Foster (née Kelly) was born in Enniskillen in 1970 and was raised in the townland of Dernawilt, on the outskirts of Aghadrumsee. She is a member of the Church of Ireland. Her father John Kelly was a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer and part time farmer, while her mother was originally from Sandy Row in inner city Belfast. Foster has described her rural County Fermanagh childhood as being happy and idyllic, remarking that although they lived in a nationalist area they never had any difficulties with their neighbours.
Foster's experience with the Troubles began early in her life when a night-time attempt was made in 1979 to kill her father, who was severely injured by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) at their family farm when a number of gunmen opened fire on him while he was locking up his yard for the night. As a result, her family was forced to leave the Roslea area and move to the Castlebalfour Estate, a housing estate in nearby Lisnaskea. Foster would later accuse Séamus McElwain of being the person responsible for the attack on her father. In 1988, a teenaged Foster was on a school bus that was attacked by the IRA. The bus was targeted with an under vehicle booby trap device because its driver, Ernie Wilson, was a part-time soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment. Although Foster was not harmed in the explosion, a girl sitting near her was seriously injured. The IRA later released a communiqué claiming the device malfunctioned and should have detonated as soon as the driver left the depot before any children boarded.
Foster was a pupil at Enniskillen Collegiate Grammar School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, from 1982 to 1989, and attended Queen's University Belfast (QUB), where she graduated with an LLB degree. Her political career began at Queen's University Belfast when she joined the Queen's Unionist Association, part of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). She served as the association's chair from 1992 to 1993. At the 1991 annual conference of the UUP's youth wing, the Ulster Young Unionist Council (UYUC), during abortive talks between the constitutional political parties in Northern Ireland initiated by Secretary of State Peter Brooke, she seconded a motion opposing devolved government in Northern Ireland, instead calling for the province to be more closely integrated with the rest of the United Kingdom. The motion carried.Ulster Review, Issue 6, Young Unionist Council, 1991. Following the 1993 local elections in Northern Ireland, she wrote a letter to Ulster Review, the current affairs magazine of the UYUC, expressing opposition to power-sharing arrangements with the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) on local councils where unionists had a majority, arguing that because the SDLP were a nationalist party who wanted to the see the "demise" of Northern Ireland who had "no desire to be full citizens of the United Kingdom" they "should therefore be denied the perks of this citizenship".Ulster Review, Issue 11, Young Unionist Council, 1993. Having been born on the island of Ireland, Foster herself automatically qualifies for Irish citizenship.
After leaving Queen's University she remained active in the UUP, chairing its youth wing, the UYUC, in 1995. In 1996, she became an Honorary Secretary of the UUP's ruling body, the Ulster Unionist Council, a position which she held until her resignation from the UUP on 18 December 2003. She was a councillor on Fermanagh District Council representing Enniskillen from 2005 to 2010.
Early Assembly and Executive career (2003–2016) She was elected as an Ulster Unionist in the 2003 Assembly elections. While a member of the UUP, she was part of a "rightwing cabal within the UUP known as the 'baby barristers'." They actively opposed party leader David Trimble, and were a "thorn in [his] side" after he supported the Belfast Agreement.
In 2004, Foster resigned from the UUP and joined the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), together with fellow Assembly members Jeffrey Donaldson and Norah Beare. She was selected as the DUP's candidate for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in the 2005 UK general election, where she gained 28.8% of the vote.
Negotiations took place between the local branches of the DUP and UUP with the aim of finding an agreed unionist candidate. The negotiations broke down with neither party willing to accept the electoral dominance of the other; the UUP claiming Foster's defection to the DUP disguised the reality of the UUP's electoral strength, while the DUP pointed to the change in the unionist political landscape following the 2003 Assembly election and the 2004 European Parliament election. The UUP candidate was Tom Elliott. Foster finished second in the 2005 general election with 14,056 votes.
On 11 January 2010, she assumed the duties of the First Minister of Northern Ireland, as Peter Robinson stepped aside for a planned period of up to six weeks. Foster worked alongside the deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. Robinson returned earlier than planned, on 3 February 2010. She again became acting First Minister on 10 September 2015, following the resignation of Robinson and a majority of DUP ministers in the wake of the killing of Kevin McGuigan. Robinson resumed his position as First Minister on 20 October 2015, following a government review into paramilitary activities in Northern Ireland.
Minister for the Environment
In September 2007, a privately financed proposal for a new Giant's Causeway centre was given preliminary approval by Foster in her role as Northern Ireland Environment Minister. Immediately afterwards, the public money that had been allocated to the causeway development was frozen. The proposal resulted in a public row about the relationship between the private developer Seymour Sweeney and the DUP; Sweeney was a member of the DUP, although both he and the DUP denied that he had ever donated financially to the party.
On 29 January 2008, Foster announced that she had decided against Sweeney's proposal for a £21 million visitors' centre on a protected greenfield site, reversing her earlier position of "being minded" to approve it. Although the public funds for a causeway scheme remained frozen, it seemed highly likely that the publicly funded plan for the causeway would go ahead with the support of deputy DUP leader Nigel Dodds.
Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment
A major concession for Northern Ireland was the reduction to zero of Air Passenger Duty on long-haul flights from the province. In the devolution settlement such burdens were to be born by the Assembly government. But negotiations proved how DUP could sell their support to Whitehall.An Air Transport Policy for Northern Ireland, 28 May 2012, House of Commons Northern Ireland Committee hearings, p.81. In 2011, she had written to the Organised Crime Task Force about the need to bring fuel licensing within the remit of the Petrol licensing Consolidation (NI) Act 1929, demonstrating the relevance of cross-border law enforcement jurisdiction in helping to reduce frauds.Fuel Laundering and Smuggling in Northern Ireland: 3rd Report, House of Commons, Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, December 2011.
As the minister responsible for energy policy in June 2012, Foster criticised the Co-operative Group over the showing of a documentary opposing fracking, saying: "I find your claim that you take 'ethics to the next level' hard to reconcile with your demonstrable support for a film which presents a wholly one-sided and partial approach to the debate about hydraulic fracturing."
She successfully liaised with UK ministers, such as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers MP, to restore HMS Caroline in Belfast.
In March 2014, Foster called for an apology for what she described as "deeply insulting" language" in a comment made by fellow MLA Anna Lo of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland. Lo had described herself as "anti-colonial" and said the partition of Ireland was "artificial". Foster herself was challenged in a blog by Irish writer Jude Collins over the fact that she had chosen to speak out so robustly on the matter after not commenting about remarks made the previous day by another Unionist politician, Progressive Unionist Party leader Billy Hutchinson. The former UVF member who was responsible for two sectarian murders during The Troubles stated that he had "no regrets in terms of my past because I believe that I contributed to preventing a united Ireland." Hutchinson also stated: "There is no room for violence in this society."
First Minister of Northern Ireland (2016–17; 2020–21)