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What next for the scandal-ridden Bible-basher? Perhaps redemption via TV
Ex-MP, Iris Robinson
Iris Robinson resigns as an MP and from Northern Ireland assembly
Disgraced homophobic MP Iris Robinson's formal resignation from the Northern Ireland assembly will be announced on Monday.
Yesterday at Westminster the Treasury also announced that the scandal-ridden fundamentalist Christian had resigned as MP for Strangford. She was expelled from the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) last week.
She will also be standing down from her position on Castlereagh borough council, the source of the financial side of the scandal that ruined her and led her husband, Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson, to stand down for six weeks in order to distance himself from her activities.
Iris Robinson's political career became untenable after it became public knowledge that she had secured £50,000, of which she is alleged to have taken £5000 for herself, from two property developers to finance her teenage lover's cafe. She failed to reveal her personal and financial interest in the business even though she was a member of the council which awarded the lease of the cafe to 19-year-old Kirk McCambley.
She is also accused of lobbying on behalf of one of the property developers, Ken Campbell, for a building scheme he was involved with in her constituency.
She is said to be receiving "acute psychiatric care" in a Belfast hospital amid allegations of two extramarital affairs in addition to that with McCambley in 2008, one with his father, and the other, during the 1980s, with an unnamed fellow DUP politician which was said have been witnessed by security personnel.
Just before Christmas, Robinson announced that she was retiring from politics owing to mental health issues, and subsequently released a statement revealing a suicide attempt following her confession to her husband that she had had an affair with another man, later named as Kirk McCambley.
In 2008, she was the subject of a police investigation after complaints were lodged with the BBC following her comments on Radio Ulster's Stephen Nolan Show. Robinson had told listeners that homosexuality was "disgusting, loathsome, nauseating, wicked and vile", an "abomination" that could be "cured" by therapy.
She said: "I have a very lovely psychiatrist who works with me in my offices and his Christian background is that he tries to help homosexuals - trying to turn away from what they are engaged in. And I have met people who have turned around to become heterosexual."
In the same month, she said in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph that she was "repulsed" by homosexuality, and regarded it as "comparable" to child sex abuse. She has also said: "Just as a murderer can be redeemed by the blood of Christ, so can a homosexual."
