Arlene Foster

Background

Foster was born in Enniskillen and was raised in the townland of Dernawilt, County Fermanagh, located between Lisnaskea and Roslea. She is a member of the Protestant Church of Ireland. Her experience with the Troubles began early in her life when a night-time attempt was made to kill her father, a Royal Ulster Constabulary reservist, who was shot and severely injured at their family farm; the family was forced to leave the Roslea area.

As a teenager, Foster was on a school bus that was bombed by the IRA, the vehicle targeted because its driver was a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment. A girl sitting near her was seriously injured. She was a pupil at Enniskillen Collegiate Grammar School in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh from 1982 to 1989. She was educated at Queen's University, Belfast where she graduated with an LL.B. degree. It was at Queen's University where her political career began after joining the Queen's Unionist Association, part of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).

She served as the association's chairman from 1992 to 1993. After leaving Queen's University she remained active in the UUP, chairing its youth wing, the Ulster Young Unionist Council, 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.

Assembly career

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 along with the deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. Robinson returned earlier than planned, on 3 February 2010.

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 the new 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 parties 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 new visitors' centre, reversing her earlier position of "being minded" to approve it. Although the public funds for a Causeway scheme remained frozen for the time being, it seemed highly likely that the publicly funded plan for the Causeway would now go ahead after all.

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment

As the minister responsible for energy policy, in June 2012 Foster attacked 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."

Controversy

In March 2014 Foster became embroiled in controversy after demanding 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 over the fact that she had chosen to speak out so robustly on the matter, after remaining silent about arguably much more controversial comments made the previous day by another Unionist politician, Progressive Unionist Party leader Billy Hutchinson. Hutchinson had said in a newspaper interview that he had "no regrets in terms of my past because I believe that I contributed to preventing a united Ireland", with regard to the sectarian murders of two Catholic men in 1974.

In January 2016, as she was poised to become First Minister, Foster caused controversy by saying she would not be travelling to Dublin for the official centenary celebrations of the 1916 uprising against British rule, describing the rising as "an attack on democracy".

Renewable Heat Incentive scandal

In December 2016, Foster faced criticism and controversy after a whistleblower revealed that the Renewable Heat Incentive scheme overspent by £400m, a failure which has been nicknamed the Cash for Ash scandal. The scheme was originally set up by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI, now Department for the Economy) when she was Minister of the department and the scheme offered incentives to businesses if they installed renewable heating systems, such as burning wooden pellets.

She faced strong criticism after it was claimed that she personally campaigned to keep the scheme open, even when senior civil servants warned of the overspend and the Minister responsible, Jonathan Bell, planned on closing it. It remained open for an extra two weeks before it was finally closed. It was also revealed that the Northern Ireland budget would lose £400m over the next 20 years as a result of the failure of the scheme. An independent audit investigated 300 sites and found there were issues at half of them, including 14 cases where there were suspicions of 'serious fraud'.

When senior civil servants suggested the closure of the scheme in September 2015, the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (now the Executive Office) pressured the department to keep the scheme open, which is when there was a spike in applications. There were calls for Foster to resign as First Minister after the scandal broke.

On 9 January 2017, McGuinness resigned as deputy First Minister. Under the terms of the power-sharing agreement that created what is now the Executive Office, his resignation has also resulted in Foster being removed from office, until Sinn Féin nominates a new deputy First Minister; the party stated that it will not replace McGuinness. No nomination was made before 16 January, resulting in the collapse of the Executive. James Brokenshire, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, assumed the powers of the Executive and called for a snap election scheduled for 2 March.

In a statement posted to Facebook, Foster said that she was "disappointed" with McGuinness' decision and condemned it as "not principled": "At a time when we are dealing with Brexit, needing to create more jobs and investing in our health and education system, Northern Ireland needs stability. But because of Sinn Féin's selfish reactions, we now have instability, and I very much regret that." She expressed concern over the possibility of another election less than a year after the previous one, and said "this is not an election of our making", but that "the DUP will always defend unionism and stand up for what is best for Northern Ireland."

Personal life

Foster and her husband Brian have three children. She was a Councillor on Fermanagh District Council representing Enniskillen ward from 2005-10. In 2008, she was recognised as Assembly member of the year at the Women in Public Life Awards.

Foster supports Scottish football club Rangers.