Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster: four counties with unionist majorities – Antrim, Armagh, Down, and Londonderry – and two counties with slight Irish nationalist majorities – Fermanagh and Tyrone – in the 1918 General Election. The remaining three Ulster counties with larger nationalist majorities were not included. In large part unionists, at least in the north-east, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed.
The Northern Ireland Assembly, often referred to by the metonym Stormont, is the devolved legislature of Northern Ireland. It has power to legislate in a wide range of areas that are not explicitly reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and to appoint the Northern Ireland Executive. It sits at Parliament Buildings at Stormont in Belfast.
The Northern Ireland Executive is the devolved government of Northern Ireland, an administrative branch of the legislature – the Northern Ireland Assembly, situated in Belfast. It is answerable to the assembly and was initially established according to the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which followed the Good Friday Agreement. The executive is referred to in the legislation as the Executive Committee of the assembly and is an example of consociationalist ("power-sharing") government.
The Sunningdale Agreement was an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland. The agreement was signed by the British and Irish government in Sunningdale, Berkshire, on 9 December 1973. Unionist opposition, violence and a general strike caused the collapse of the agreement in May 1974.
The Northern Ireland Office is a ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for handling Northern Ireland affairs. The NIO is led by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and is based at Erskine House in Belfast City Centre and 1 Horse Guards Road in London.
In the United Kingdom, devolved matters are the areas of public policy where the Parliament of the United Kingdom has devolved its legislative power to the national legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, while reserved matters and excepted matters are the areas where the UK Parliament retains exclusive power to legislate.
The Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure was a devolved government department in the Northern Ireland Executive. The minister with overall responsibility for the department was the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure.
The St Andrews Agreement is an agreement between the British and Irish governments and Northern Ireland's political parties in relation to the devolution of power in the region. The agreement resulted from multi-party talks held in St Andrews in Fife, Scotland, from 11 to 13 October 2006, between the two governments and all the major parties in Northern Ireland, including the two largest, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin. It resulted in the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the formation of a new Northern Ireland Executive and a decision by Sinn Féin to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland, courts and rule of law.
The Executive of the 1st Northern Ireland Assembly was, under the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, a power-sharing coalition.
The Good Friday Agreement (GFA) or Belfast Agreement is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland since the late 1960s. It was a major development in the Northern Ireland peace process of the 1990s. It is made up of the Multi-Party Agreement between most of Northern Ireland's political parties, and the British–Irish Agreement between the British and Irish governments. Northern Ireland's present devolved system of government is based on the agreement.
A cross-community vote or cross-community support is a form of voting used in the Northern Ireland Assembly according to the provisions of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. It requires the support of both main communities in Northern Ireland, in other words majority of unionists and the majority of nationalist members of the Assembly. Among other reasons, it arises when the petition of concern procedure is invoked.
The 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2016. It was the fifth election to take place since the devolved assembly was established in 1998. 1,281,595 individuals were registered to vote in the election. Turnout in the 2016 Assembly election was 703,744 (54.9%), a decline of less than one percentage point from the previous Assembly Election in 2011, but down 15 percentage points from the first election to the Assembly held in 1998.
In the United Kingdom, devolution is the Parliament of the United Kingdom's statutory granting of a greater level of self-government to the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the London Assembly and to their associated executive bodies: the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government, the Northern Ireland Executive and in England, the Greater London Authority and combined authorities.
The Electricity Act 1989 provided for the privatisation of the electricity supply industry in Great Britain, by replacing the Central Electricity Generating Board in England and Wales and by restructuring the South of Scotland Electricity Board and the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. The Act also established a licensing regime and a regulator for the industry called the Office of Electricity Regulation (OFFER), which has since become the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (OFGEM).
The 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on Thursday, 2 March 2017. The election was held to elect members (MLAs) following the resignation of deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness in protest over the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal. McGuinness' position was not filled, and thus by law his resignation triggered an election.
The Assembly Members Act 2016 is a 2016 Act of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It provided for a reduction of Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in the Assembly from 108 to 90 for the first election following the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election. MLAs are elected by single transferable vote (STV), with each of Northern Ireland's 18 Westminster constituencies being used to elect multiple MLAs.
The Northern Ireland Act 2019, colloquially known as the 2019 Northern Ireland Act, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that provided for the extension of the period for forming a Northern Ireland executive until 13 January 2020. The Act also extended the powers of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland during this time whilst imposing several conditions. The Act requires that the Secretary of State report regularly to Parliament, designed to limit the ability of the sovereign to prorogue parliament, as well as providing for the legalisation of same-sex marriage and opposite-sex civil partnership in Northern Ireland and the liberalisation of abortion laws if no executive was formed by midnight on 21 October 2019. After the deadline passed, abortion was decriminalised automatically by repeal of Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861; in December 2019 the British Government passed regulations legalising same-sex marriage and opposite-sex civil partnerships on 13 January 2020. Further regulations governing abortion came into force on 31 March 2020.
New Decade, New Approach (NDNA) is a 9 January 2020 agreement which restored the government of the Northern Ireland Executive after a three-year hiatus triggered by the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal. It was negotiated by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Julian Smith and Irish Tánaiste Simon Coveney.
A Northern Ireland Assembly election will be held to elect 90 members to the Northern Ireland Assembly on or before 6 May 2027.