Wiktionary
n. (context politics English) a member of a legislative body who holds a position in government below cabinet level, i.e. reporting to the head of a department, not the prime minister or head of government
Wikipedia
The term Junior Minister, in Northern Ireland, is the name given to two positions in the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (OFMDFM).
The incumbent junior ministers are Alastair Ross ( Democratic Unionist Party) and Megan Fearon ( Sinn Féin).
Under the Northern Ireland Act 1998, the First Minister and deputy First Minister acting jointly may determine that a number of members of the Northern Ireland Assembly shall be appointed as junior ministers.
The salary of each junior minister in 2007–2008 (when devolution was restored) was £60,067.42, which increased to the current level of £62,709.96 in 2008–2009.
The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) called for the immediate abolition of the junior minister positions in its 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election manifesto.
Usage examples of "junior minister".
He had been assuming that it was sheer coincidence that the Junior Minister's daughter had been there, of all places, when the man had been cornered with the File, but now he began questioning that assumption.
An Opposition speaker was on his feet, requiring a junior minister at the Foreign Office to explain what assurance the government, and the President of the United States, had been given as to the sincerity of the Soviet Union with regard to arms reductions - a late, and rather naive, attempt to stir doubt.
Whilst stressing that it is not policy to comment upon any individual case, a junior minister suggested that this was not the sort of situation which would ordinarily arouse Interest at the higher levels, given the status of the victims.
Someone had contacted a Junior Minister, who had put him on to Haavikko's office.
The junior minister administered an antidote to the sedative, released the restraints, and waited.
Karzai had been a junior minister with the Taliban and he had defected years ago and joined the opposition.
In fact, as a junior minister of Mugabe's government, I was one of those who gave approval to the grant.
The owners, a government junior minister and his monied wife, were taking a spring holiday in the Bahamas.
I was Junior Minister in the Department of Magical Catastrophes at the time, and I was one of the first on the scene after Black murdered all those people.