Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, PC was a politician and church minister in Ireland. As the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the largest single grouping in the 2007 elections to the Stormont Assembly, he was elected First Minister with Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness as deputy First Minister on 8 May 2007.
In addition to co-founding the DUP and leading it from 1971 to 2008, he was a founding member and immediate past Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster.