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Biography
Peter Weir MLA (born 21 November 1968) is a Northern Ireland politician with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) serving as Education Minister since 2020, and previously from 2016 to 2017. Weir is the first non-Sinn Féin legislator (following Martin McGuinness, Caitríona Ruane, and John O'Dowd) to head the Department of Education since the department came into existence on 2 December 1999.
Career
A past chairman of the Young Unionists (the UUP Youth Wing), Weir is a barrister by profession. He attended Bangor Grammar School and graduated from the Queen's University of Belfast in Law and Accountancy. He was called to the Northern Ireland Bar in 1992 and is a former editor of the Ulster Review. Weir has been a member of the Queen's University Senate since 1996 and is also leading member of the University Convocation. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Peace Forum in 1996 for the constituency of North Down.
Weir refused to support the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, saying in one television interview that the only positive comment he could summon for the Agreement was that it was "very nicely typed". A leading critic of then-party leader David Trimble's policies, Weir was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in the 1998 election.
Weir was selected as his party's candidate to fight the 2001 general election in North Down, but a month before the election tensions between him and the party reached the stage where he was deselected and replaced by Sylvia Hermon. Weir was later expelled from the Ulster Unionist Party for refusing to support the re-election of David Trimble as First Minister of Northern Ireland. Following a period as an Independent Unionist, Weir joined the Democratic Unionist Party in 2002.
Since then, he has been re-elected from North Down at each election for the DUP. In the 2005 Westminster election Weir finally stood for North Down, this time for the DUP, but lost to Sylvia, Lady Hermon of the Ulster Unionist Party.
He is a member of the North Down Borough Council and belongs to the Orange Order and the Royal Black Preceptory. He attends Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church.
