[BITList] northern ireland politics

[CT's]

quite a gal......................................!

Northern Ireland Chief Steps Aside 

By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: January 11, 2010 
LONDON - After days of political turmoil in Northern Ireland over the personal and financial affairs of his wife, the province's first minister, Peter Robinson, stepped down temporarily on Monday as co-leader of the power-sharing government that has ruled the province since 2007.

Peter Morrison/Associated Press
Times Topics: Northern Ireland

Mr. Robinson, 61, said he would relinquish his position for six weeks to "take time for family matters" involving his wife Iris, 60, and to allow probes to go forward into his actions in respect of $80,000 in loans raised by his wife in 2008 and given to her then 19-year-old lover, Kirk McCambley. Mrs. Robinson, a prominent lawmaker for the majority Protestants, admitted last week that she had an intimate affair lasting seven months with Mr. McCambley, and said that she had tried to kill herself over the matter in March 2009.

Popular attention in the province continued to center on Mrs. Robinson's love life - and on two other affairs that Monday's editions of several Belfast- and London-based newspapers reported she had in recent years. But political repercussions centered on the loans she took from local property developers to help establish Mr. McCambley as the owner of a café in a government-owned building in the parliamentary constituency she represents in Belfast - and on what her husband did when he first learned of the loans.
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