First Minister of Northern Ireland and Veteran Politician and Church Leader Ian Richard Kyle Paisley was in Cork last Friday night to address the 50th Annual Dinner of the Cobh and Harbour Chamber of Commerce at the Commodore Hotel.

A relaxed Paisley kept Dinner Guests amused with his "Parables of Cork" and describing himself as a Man who to quote his analogy on North/South Relations "Got the ship into the water and its waterproof, sailing in the right direction".

While he's known for his humour, admitted to having visited Cork 22 years ago but said "he only touched the Blarney Stone, as too many people had kissed it".

He also told Press earlier that afternoon that he intends to keep busy when he steps out of the spotlight saying "I may write a book putting on record things that need to be put on record, but I won't have it published till after my death – as I'll be safer in Heaven".

Ian Paisley as born on 6th April 1926 and is the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party ,the largest single group in the 2007 elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, he was elected First Minister on the 8th May 2007.

In 2005, Paisley's political party became the largest Unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing his long-term rivals, the Ulster Unionists, who had dominated Unionist politics in Northern Ireland since the partition of Ireland.

Ian Paisley was born in Armagh and brought up in the town of Ballymena, County Antrim. He joined the Free Presbyterian Church and was elected the second moderator of the new denomination. He held this post for several decades.

It was in his religious capacity first that he agreed to meet Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and in September 2004 he agreed to meet him in his political capacity as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.

Known for a sense of humour at an early meeting with The Taoiseach at the Irish embassy in London, Paisley requested breakfast and asked for boiled eggs; when Bertie Ahern asked him why he had wanted boiled eggs; Paisley replied "Well you can't poison them".

In the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly elections, the DUP overtook the UUP to become the largest party in Northern Ireland, achieving thirty seats and in the 2005 U.K. General Election achieving almost twice their vote share and taking nine seats to the UUP's one.

In the 1980s Paisley, like all the major Unionist leaders, opposed the Angle-Irish Agreement. The Agreement provided for an Irish input into the governing of Northern Ireland.