The Rev Ian Paisley has announced he is to stand down as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and Northern Ireland's First Minister in May.
Paisley talking to the media in Belfast earlier this month
He confirmed his decision to go today after mounting pressure from within his party in recent weeks to stand aside.
The 81-year-old First Minister, who will remain as an MP and Assembly member, will quit after an investment conference in Belfast scheduled to take place from May 7th to May 9th.
The unionist leader said: "I came to this decision a few weeks ago when I was thinking very much about the conference and what was going to come after the conference.
"I thought that it is a marker, a very big marker and it would be a very appropriate time for me to bow out."
Mr Paisley's remarkable career has spanned five decades. Regarded for much of his career as a hardliner and a stern critic of Irish republicanism, he steered his party from the political margins to becoming the biggest party in a power-sharing executive alongside Sinn Fein.
His decision to resign comes amid mounting criticism in his party about the electoral impact of images of him and Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness joking in public, earning them the nickname "the Chuckle Brothers".
That, coupled with a series of negative stories about his son Ian Paisley junior who was forced to resign from the Stormont Executive over his links to a property developer, caused deep unease and led to intense discussions with senior party figures over his resignation.
DUP deputy leader and Stormont Finance Minister Peter Robinson will be the early favourite to succeed Mr Paisley.
Party sources would also not discount Stormont Economy Minister Nigel Dodds. Mr Paisley would not be drawn on who would succeed him.
"This is not the Church of Rome," he told Ulster Television. "This is not Apostolic succession and I have no right to say who will succeed me.
"The person will succeed me when the mark is on the paper and the ballot is cast.
"Whomever that will be will have my support and encouragement and if he wants to take my advice, he will get that advice if he asks for it, but I will not be sitting like Putin in Russia saying to the president This is the way you have to go."
"When I make a break, it is a break," he added.
Mr Paisley has been MP for North Antrim since 1970 and also served as a member of the European Parliament between 1979 and 2003, topping the Northern Ireland poll for Strasbourg and Brussels in every election.
As well as being a strong critic of the IRA and Sinn Fein, he resisted a role for the Irish Government in Northern Ireland's affairs.
But in recent years he has forged a cordial working relationship with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. He remains as harsh a critic of Ulster Unionism as he ever was and drew great satisfaction from the DUP's emergence as the largest unionist party in the 2003 Assembly election and their even more emphatic victory two years later at the last general election which led to David Trimble's electoral demise.
Under DUP rules, candidates for the leadership of the party will first face a ballot of the DUP's Assembly Group.
The Assembly Group would then make a recommendation to the party executive, which will have to ratify the choice.
"It is unlikely the Executive would reject the Assembly Group's choice," a source said.
The clamour inside the party for Mr Paisley to stand aside for the next generation of DUP leaders is believed to have grown in the wake of the announcement last Friday that his son, Ian Paisley Junior, has been appointed to the Policing Board.
Some Assembly colleagues believed it was too soon for the North Antrim MLA to be given a high profile post.
Those tensions were exacerbated by suggestions from him in a radio interview that his appointment would enable unionists to regain control over the policing debate. Sources said that was seen as an implicit criticism of DUP colleagues on the board.
Mr Paisley stood by his son tonight, insisting he was wrongfully accused and had been used to get at him. He also defended his decision to go into government with Sinn Fein.
"It was the right thing to do because it was the only thing to do in the circumstances that was going to save us from an eventual united Ireland," the North Antrim MP said.