The Northern Ireland Act 1998 (c.47) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which established a devolved legislature for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Assembly, after decades of direct rule from Westminster.
It repealed the Government of Ireland Act 1920, parts of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973, and established new rules in line with the European Union and the Northern Ireland peace process, subsequent to the Belfast Agreement of 1998.
The Act allows for a devolved Northern Ireland Assembly of 108 members. Membership of the assembly is subject to a pledge of office, which subjects the member to certain requirements with regard to standards and responsibilities. Northern Ireland remains a part of the United Kingdom until or unless a majority vote in a referendum determines otherwise. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland holds the power to call for the referendum if appears likely to him that a majority of the voters would express their desire to become part of a United Ireland. The Assembly has the power of modifying any Act of the British Parliament as far as it "is part of the law of Northern Ireland". They cannot deal, however, with reserved or excepted matters, which are of exclusive competence of the government of the United Kingdom, in consultation with the Republic of Ireland through the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference. The Assembly has been suspended a number of times since 1998, and was re-established on Tuesday 8 May 2007, subsequent to the St Andrews Agreement of 2006.
Election to the Assembly is by single transferable vote (STV), a form of proportional representation.
Famous quotes containing the words northern ireland, northern, ireland and/or act:
“... in Northern Ireland, if you don’t have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.”
—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
“‘What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I,
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;”
—Walter De La Mare (1873–1956)
“Come, fix upon me that accusing eye.
I thirst for accusation. All that was sung.
All that was said in Ireland is a lie
Breed out of the contagion of the throng,
Saving the rhyme rats hear before they die.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)