Ian Marshall (farmer)


Ian Marshall is a farmer and politician from Markethill, County Armagh, in Northern Ireland. He is from a unionist background and campaigned against Brexit. He was elected to Seanad Éireann in Dublin in 2018.

Farming

Marshall is a dairy farmer in the agrifood sector and was president of the Ulster Farmers' Union from 2014 to 2016. In 2015 he invested in the controversial Renewable Heat Incentive scheme and later complained that its critics made no distinction between legitimate investors and those who misused the scheme. In February 2017 the UFU successfully challenged a 2012 reduction by DARD in Marshall's CAP grant, provoked by nitrate pollution detected by NIEA near his farm in 2010–2011, on the basis that the pollution was unintentional. In August 2017, Marshall was appointed Business Development Manager at the Institute for Global Food Security in Queen's University Belfast.

Seanad

Marshall was elected to the 25th Seanad on 27 April 2018 in a by-election for the Agricultural Panel. The vacancy was caused by the resignation of Denis Landy. He was approached to stand by Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader; his candidacy was also supported by Sinn Féin. He has never been a member of a political party and sat as an independent. He was the first unionist member elected to the Oireachtas since the 1930s.
He lost his seat at the 2020 Seanad election.