1.
Northern Ireland Assembly
–
The Northern Ireland Assembly is the devolved legislature of Northern Ireland. It has power to legislate in a range of areas that are not explicitly reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It sits at Parliament Buildings at Stormont in Belfast, the Assembly is one of two mutually inter-dependent institutions created under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the other being the North/South Ministerial Council with the Republic of Ireland. The Agreement aimed at bringing an end to Northern Irelands violent 30-year Troubles, the Assembly is a unicameral, democratically elected body comprising 90 members known as Members of the Legislative Assembly, or MLAs. Members are elected under the single transferable vote form of proportional representation, the Assembly has been suspended on several occasions, the longest suspension being from 14 October 2002 until 7 May 2007. When the Assembly was suspended, its powers reverted to the Northern Ireland Office, powers in relation to policing and justice were transferred to the Assembly on 12 April 2010. The third assembly was dissolved on 24 March 2011 in preparation for the elections to be held on Thursday 5 May 2011 and this was the first assembly since the Good Friday Agreement to complete a full term. This was followed by a fourth term. After the May 2016 elections, the Assembly convened for a fifth term and that assembly dissolved on 26 January 2017, and a fresh election for a reduced Assembly was held on 2 March 2017. The Parliament was suspended on 30 March 1972 and formally abolished in 1973 under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973, shortly after this first parliament was abolished, attempts began to restore devolution on a new basis that would see power shared between Irish nationalists and unionists. To this end a new parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, was established in 1973, however, this body was brought down by the Ulster Workers Council strike and was abolished in 1974. It received little support from Irish nationalists and was dissolved in 1986. The current incarnation of the Northern Ireland Assembly was first elected on 25 June 1998, however, it only existed in shadow form until 2 December 1999 when full powers were devolved to the Assembly. On 8 December 2005, three Belfast men at the centre of the alleged IRA spying incident were acquitted of all charges, the prosecution offered no evidence in the public interest. Afterwards Denis Donaldson, one of those arrested, said that the charges should never have been brought as the action was political. On 17 December 2005, Donaldson publicly confirmed that he had been a spy for British intelligence since the early 1980s, mr Donaldson was killed on 4 April 2006 by the Real IRA. Eileen Bell was appointed by the Secretary of State Peter Hain to be the Speaker of the Assembly, with Francie Molloy, the Northern Ireland Act 2006 repealed the Northern Ireland Act 2006 and thus disbanded the Assembly. The Northern Ireland Act 2006 provided for a Transitional Assembly to take part in preparations for the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland, a person who was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly was also a member of the Transitional Assembly
2.
Term of office
–
A term of office is the length of time a person serves in a particular elected office. In many jurisdictions there is a limit on how long terms of office may be before the officeholder must be subject to re-election. Some jurisdictions exercise term limits, setting a number of terms an individual may hold in a particular office. Being the origin of the Westminster system, aspects of the United Kingdoms system of government are replicated in other countries. The monarch serves as head of state until his or her death or abdication, in the United Kingdom Members of Parliament in the House of Commons are elected for the duration of the parliament. Following dissolution of the Parliament, an election is held which consists of simultaneous elections for all seats. For most MPs this means that their terms of office are identical to the duration of the Parliament, an MP elected in a by-election mid-way through a Parliament, regardless of how long they have occupied the seat, is not exempt from facing re-election at the next general election. The Septennial Act 1715 provided that a Parliament expired seven years after it had been summoned, prior to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 parliaments had no minimum duration. Parliaments could be dissolved early by the monarch at the Prime Ministers request, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 mandated that Parliaments should last their full five years. Early dissolution is possible, but under much more limited circumstances. Hereditary peers and life peers retain membership of the House of Lords for life, Lords Spiritual hold membership of the House of Lords until the end of their time as bishops, though a senior bishop may be made a life peer upon the end of their bishopric. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are variations on the system of government used at Westminster, the office of the leader of the devolved administrations has no numeric term limit imposed upon it. However, in the case of the Scottish Government and the Welsh Assembly Government there are fixed terms for which the legislatures can sit and this is imposed at four years. Elections may be held before this time but only if no administration can be formed, offices of local government other regional elected officials follow similar rules to the national offices discussed above, with persons elected to fixed terms of a few years. Federal judges have different terms in office, however, the majority of the federal judiciary, Article III judges, such as those of the Supreme Court, courts of appeal, and federal district courts, serve for life. The terms of office for officials in state governments according to the provisions of state constitutions. The term for state governors is four years in all states but Vermont and New Hampshire, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported in January 2007 that among state legislatures,44 states had terms of office for the lower house of the state legislature at two years. Five had terms of office at four years,37 states had terms of office for the upper house of the state legislature at four years
3.
John Alderdice, Baron Alderdice
–
John Thomas Alderdice, Baron Alderdice is a Northern Ireland politician. He was Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly 1998–2004, leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland 1987–1998, Alderdice was born to the Rev. David Alderdice and Annie Margaret Helena Shields. He was educated at Ballymena Academy and the Queens University of Belfast where he studied medicine, in 1977, he married Joan Hill, with whom he has two sons and one daughter. He worked part-time as a consultant psychiatrist in psychotherapy in the NHS from 1988 until he retired from practice in 2010. He also lectured at Queens Universitys Faculty of Medicine between 1991 and 1999, Alderdice claims a distant relationship to John King, a nineteenth century Australian explorer and the sole survivor of the Burke and Wills expedition. The Alliance Party was formed in 1970 as an alternative to sectarian politics, throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alliances vote across Northern Ireland stabilised at between 6% and 8%. Alderdice once again contested Belfast East in the 1992 general election and he led the Alliance Delegation to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation at Dublin Castle and the Northern Ireland Multiparty Talks, and was a member of the Northern Ireland Forum. Alderdice was willing to talk with Sinn Féin, after the IRA called a ceasefire in 1994 and he was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East in 1998 and became the Assemblys first speaker, serving until 2004. Mo Mowlam said that Alderdices political and parliamentary experience mean that he is suited to carry out this role. Alderdice was a Belfast City Councillor from 1989 until 1997 and he resigned as party leader in 1998 to take the position of Speaker. He was a member of the Independent Monitoring Commission from 2004 to 2011, Alderdice was created a life peer on 8 October 1996 as Baron Alderdice, of Knock in the City of Belfast, and was one of the youngest ever life peers. He sits in the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat, on 10 June 2010, he was elected to the new position of Convenor of the Liberal Democrat Peers, a role in which he chairs the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party in the House of Lords. He was elected President of Liberal International in 2005 and served until Liberal Internationals Cairo congress in 2009 and he was succeeded by Dutch politician Hans van Baalen. Alderdice has been awarded several honours, the John F Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award in 1998 and he is an elder in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland
4.
Northern Ireland
–
Northern Ireland is a constituent unit of the United Kingdom in the north-east of Ireland. It is variously described as a country, province, region, or part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, its population was 1,810,863, constituting about 30% of the total population. Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland by an act of the British parliament, Northern Ireland has historically been the most industrialised region of Ireland. After declining as a result of the political and social turmoil of the Troubles, its economy has grown significantly since the late 1990s. Unemployment in Northern Ireland peaked at 17. 2% in 1986, dropping to 6. 1% for June–August 2014,58. 2% of those unemployed had been unemployed for over a year. Prominent artists and sports persons from Northern Ireland include Van Morrison, Rory McIlroy, Joey Dunlop, Wayne McCullough, some people from Northern Ireland prefer to identify as Irish while others prefer to identify as British. Cultural links between Northern Ireland, the rest of Ireland, and the rest of the UK are complex, in many sports, the island of Ireland fields a single team, a notable exception being association football. Northern Ireland competes separately at the Commonwealth Games, and people from Northern Ireland may compete for either Great Britain or Ireland at the Olympic Games. The region that is now Northern Ireland was the bedrock of the Irish war of resistance against English programmes of colonialism in the late 16th century, the English-controlled Kingdom of Ireland had been declared by the English king Henry VIII in 1542, but Irish resistance made English control fragmentary. Victories by English forces in war and further Protestant victories in the Williamite War in Ireland toward the close of the 17th century solidified Anglican rule in Ireland. In Northern Ireland, the victories of the Siege of Derry and their intention was to materially disadvantage the Catholic community and, to a lesser extent, the Presbyterian community. In the context of open institutional discrimination, the 18th century saw secret, militant societies develop in communities in the region and act on sectarian tensions in violent attacks. Following this, in an attempt to quell sectarianism and force the removal of discriminatory laws, the new state, formed in 1801, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was governed from a single government and parliament based in London. Between 1717 and 1775 some 250,000 people from Ulster emigrated to the British North American colonies and it is estimated that there are more than 27 million Scotch-Irish Americans now living in the US. By the close of the century, autonomy for Ireland within the United Kingdom, in 1912, after decades of obstruction from the House of Lords, Home Rule became a near-certainty. A clash between the House of Commons and House of Lords over a controversial budget produced the Parliament Act 1911, which enabled the veto of the Lords to be overturned. The House of Lords veto had been the unionists main guarantee that Home Rule would not be enacted, in 1914, they smuggled thousands of rifles and rounds of ammunition from Imperial Germany for use by the Ulster Volunteers, a paramilitary organisation opposed to the implementation of Home Rule
5.
Politics of Northern Ireland
–
Since 1998, Northern Ireland has devolved government within the United Kingdom. The government and Parliament of the United Kingdom are responsible for reserved and excepted matters, reserved matters are a list of policy area, which the Westminster Parliament may devolve to the Northern Ireland Assembly at some time in future. Excepted matters are never expected to be considered for devolution, on all other matters, the Northern Ireland Executive together with the 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly may legislate and govern for Northern Ireland. Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly are by single transferable vote with five elected from 18 parliamentary constituencies. Eighteen representatives to the house of the British parliament are elected from the same constituencies using the first-past-the-post system. However, not all of these take their seats, the four Sinn Féin MPs refuse to take the required oath to serve Queen Elizabeth II. In addition, the house of the UKs parliament, the House of Lords. Northern Ireland itself forms a constituency for elections to the European Union. The Northern Ireland Office represents the British government in Northern Ireland on reserved matters, the Government of the Republic of Ireland also has the right to put forward views and proposals on non-devolved matters in relation to Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Office is led by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, much of the population of Northern Ireland identifies with one of two different ideologies, unionism and Irish nationalism. Unionists are predominantly Ulster Protestant, most of whom belong to the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, however, not all Catholics support nationalism, and not all Protestants support unionism. The proportion of the population practising their religious beliefs has fallen dramatically in recent decades, particularly among Catholics and this has not resulted in a weakening of communal feeling. Northern Ireland currently has the political representation, the Northern Ireland Assembly has 90 Members of the Legislative Assembly. 18 seats in the United Kingdom House of Commons there are several unionists and it has also demanded that all Northern Ireland Members of the European Parliament and MPs be allowed speaking rights in the lower house of the parliament of the Republic of Ireland, Dáil Éireann. It was given to understand that the Irish government accepted this and had plans to introduce legislation in the autumn of 2005, the Social Democratic and Labour Party backed the move. Nonetheless on 22 November 2007, representatives from both Sinn Féin and the SDLP, attended a meeting of the Oireachtas committee reviewing the workings of the Good Friday Agreement. The 18 Northern Ireland MPs can take part in this committees debates, until 1972 the UUPs members of the British House of Commons took the Conservative Party whip, but currently sit as a party in their own right. The UUPs member of the European Parliament belongs to the European Conservatives, the DUP are a more complex mixture than the other major parties, combining support from rural evangelicals and urban, secular, working class voters
6.
Northern Ireland Executive
–
The Northern Ireland Executive is the devolved government of Northern Ireland, an administrative branch of the legislature Northern Ireland Assembly. It is answerable to the Assembly and was established according to the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, the executive is referred to in the legislation as the Executive Committee of the Assembly and is an example of a consociationalist government. The Northern Ireland Executive consists of the First Minister and deputy First Minister and various ministers with individual portfolios, the main Assembly parties appoint most ministers in the executive, except for the Minister of Justice who is elected by a cross-community vote. It is one of three devolved governments in the United Kingdom, the others being the Scottish and Welsh Governments, with the exception of justice, the number of ministries to which each party is entitled is determined by the DHondt system. In effect, major parties cannot be excluded from participation in government, the form of government is therefore known as mandatory coalition as opposed to voluntary coalition where parties negotiate an agreement to share power. The Executive cannot function if either of the two largest parties refuse to part, as these parties are allocated the First Minister. However, other parties are not required to enter the Executive even if they are entitled to do so, instead, devolution took place on 12 April 2010. Under DHondt, the SDLP would have been entitled to the ministerial seat on the revised Executive created by the devolution of policing. Accordingly, both the UUP and SDLP protested that Alliance was not entitled, under the rules of the Good Friday Agreement, to fill the portfolio, however, Alliance leader David Ford was elected Minister with the support of the DUP and Sinn Féin. On 26 August 2015, the UUP announced it would withdraw from the Executive and form an opposition after all, on 25 May 2016 a new executive was announced. For the first time in the history, parties that were entitled to ministries chose instead to go into opposition following a recent bill providing parties with this choice. This meant that the executive was formed only by the two parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin, and thus giving them more seats in the Executive. The Executive is co-chaired by the First Minister and deputy First Minister, Executive meetings are normally held fortnightly, compared to weekly meetings of the British Cabinet and Irish Government. The Ministerial Code allows any three ministers to request a cross-community vote, the quorum for voting is seven ministers. At present, the Executive consists of six unionist, five nationalist, the current system of devolution has succeeded long periods of direct rule, when the Northern Ireland Civil Service had a considerable influence on government policy. The legislation which established new departments in 1999 affirmed that the functions of a department shall at all times be exercised subject to the direction, Ministerial powers can be conferred by an Act of the Assembly and ministers can also exercise executive powers which are vested in the Crown. Ministerial decisions can be challenged by a petition of 30 Northern Ireland Assembly members and this action can be taken for alleged breaches of the Ministerial Code and on matters of public importance. The Speaker of the Assembly must consult political party leaders in the Assembly before deciding whether the subject is a matter of public importance, successful petitions will then be considered by the Executive
7.
First Minister and deputy First Minister
–
The First Minister and deputy First Minister are the joint heads of the Northern Ireland Executive and have overall responsibility for the running of the Executive Office. The two positions have the same power, despite the name, the deputy First Minister is not subordinate to the First Minister. The First Minister and deputy First Minister share equal responsibilities within government, the First Minister is, though, the first to greet official visitors to Northern Ireland and shares the same title as their counterparts in Scotland and Wales. The First Minister and deputy First Minister agree the agenda of Executive meetings and they are jointly accountable to the First Minister and deputy First Minister. The incumbent junior ministers are Jonathan Bell and Jennifer McCann, as originally established under the Northern Ireland Act 1998, the First Minister was elected by the Assembly on a joint ticket with the deputy First Minister through a cross-community vote. It was created to enable the leaders of the main unionist and nationalist parties to work together, for the purposes of a cross-community vote, MLAs were designated as unionist, nationalist or other. This procedure was used on 2 December 1999 to elect David Trimble, following several suspensions of the Northern Ireland Executive, Trimble was not re-elected on 2 November 2001 due to unionist opposition. This procedure, which removed the need for a joint ticket between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin, was used to appoint Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness on 8 May 2007. It was again used to appoint Peter Robinson alongside Martin McGuinness on 5 June 2008 and again on 12 May 2011, the Minister of Justice is now the only Northern Ireland Executive Minister elected on a cross-community vote. All other ministers are party appointees, the second position has been spelt Deputy or deputy First Minister, due to differing preferences by civil servants, although the spelling of the title has no constitutional consequences in practice. The first two holders of the office, Seamus Mallon and Mark Durkan, were referred to during their periods of office as Deputy First Minister, with a capital D. This version was adopted in 1999 for the logo of the OFMDFM. Speaker William Hay ordered the change and the capital D was dropped from Hansard references, however, the Assembly committee that scrutinises their work is now listed as the Committee for the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister. Ultimately it was decided that McGuinness should be the deputy First Minister, on 1 July 1998, David Trimble and Seamus Mallon were nominated and elected First Minister and Deputy First Minister designates respectively. Eventually, on 2 December 1999, power was devolved and Trimble, on 6 November 2001, Mark Durkan became Deputy First Minister after Seamus Mallons retirement. The Executive and the two positions were suspended between 15 October 2002 and 8 May 2007 following a breakdown in trust between the parties, Paisley announced his intention to resign on 4 March 2008. His deputy as DUP leader, Peter Robinson was ratified as Democratic Unionist Party leader designate on 17 April 2008, as leader-designate of the largest designated unionist party in the Northern Ireland Assembly he was also in effect the First Minister designate and became First Minister on 5 June 2008. Arlene Foster succeeded Peter Robinson as DUP leader on 18 December 2015, and as First Minister on 11 January 2016
