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Maria Eagle (born 17 February 1961) is the Northern Ireland Enterprise Minister, a British politician and solicitor. She is the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Liverpool Garston. She currently holds the rank of Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Northern Ireland Office with responsibility for several portfolios including education. In Northern Ireland she inherited the 'poisoned chalice' of the Northern Ireland Education Order that proposes ending academic selection in the province. Many locals are adamantly opposed to the Order because they see it as undermining an academic system that achieves better results than many other parts of the United Kingdom. The Order will come before the House of Commons and House of Lords in May 2006.
Eagle Maria Eagle led a delegation of 9 Northern Ireland companies on a mission to Canada in October 2006. The trip was carried out in conjunction with an Enterprise Ireland delegation from the Republic of Ireland.
Eagle was born in Bridlington, North Yorkshire, the daughter of a printworker, she was educated at St Peter's Church of England School in Formby and the Formby High School, before attending Pembroke College, Oxford where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1983. She then went to The College of Law, London, where she took her law finals in 1990. She was a solicitor in the voluntary sector from 1983, before she joined Brian Thompson & Partners in Liverpool as an articled clerk in 1990, before becoming a solicitor with Goldsmith Williams in Liverpool in 1992, before becoming the senior solicitor at Steven Irving & Co also in Liverpool, where she remained until her election to Westminster.
This text has been derived from the equivelent article on Wikipedia.org, and is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License.