In wake of sex scandal, Northern Ireland's top leader takes 6-week leave

Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland's first minister, said he was giving up his post for six weeks to concentrate on clearing his name and on caring for his wife, Iris, an influential lawmaker whose spectacular fall from grace has rocked the British province's political scene.

The revelation last week of her affair with a 19-year-old and allegations that she solicited secret loans to help him open a coffeehouse have left her career in ruins and put her in need of "acute psychiatric treatment," Peter Robinson said.

"As a father and a husband, I need to devote time to deal with family matters," he told lawmakers gathered at Stormont Castle in Belfast, the Northern Irish capital and home of the power-sharing government.

Looking drawn and grim, Robinson said he was temporarily transferring authority to Arlene Foster, a fellow minister from his Democratic Unionist Party, which earlier in the day had expressed "unanimous support" for its beleaguered leader.

Robinson also denounced accusations, made in a BBC investigation, that he had known of his wife's alleged solicitation of $80,000 from two property developers to help her lover but had failed to report it to authorities.

"It is particularly painful at this time of great personal trauma that I have to defend myself from an unfounded and mischievous allegation," he said.