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A blog from the Northern Ireland Assembly Research and Information Service

Governance Blog Archive

Here you will find an archive of Governance Blog articles published before 1 May 2022, divided into their relevant categories.

Brexit

Map showing the impact of the Protocol, the IMA and Joint Committee declaration on NI to GB trade in goods, compiled by RaISe
This blog article complements the Assembly Research and Information Paper Internal Market Act 2020 and the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland. It explains Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements. including how…
An abstract image depicting GDPR
This article examines the UK’s exit from the EU in the context of data protection, and highlights the considerations that will apply as the UK considers the costs, benefits…
An image showing EU and Union flags, facing in opposite directions
 The Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and was designed to deal with the effect of the UK’s exit from the EU on the island of…

Democracy and Government

A photo showing the Chairperson (Kellie Armstrong MLA) and Deputy Chairperson (Megan Fearon MLA) of the Northern Ireland Assembly Women's Caucus (photo courtesy of Politics Plus)
Please note that more up-to-date statistics on gender representation can be found in the RaISe research paper Who Runs Northern Ireland? A Summary of Statistics Relating to Gender and…
A photograph of the Houses of Parliament
A high profile consequence of the continuing failure to establish an Executive and fully functioning Assembly was the legislative passage this week of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and…
An image of the Northern Ireland Assembly Library
This week is Libraries Week so we thought we would provide an insight into the Northern Ireland Assembly Library, its work and the collection that it manages. The Assembly…

Justice

An image of a statue of a woman holding the scales of justice
In September 2021, Clare Bailey MLA introduced the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Bill to the Assembly. The Bill passed Second Stage on 12 October 2021 and would require…
A black and white image of a woman with her hand covering her face
In 2016 a man called Lance Hart shot his wife Claire and daughter Charlotte outside a swimming pool in Lincolnshire, England, before turning his shotgun on himself. Some of…
Image of a man holding a smartphone
    Last month, a new law came into force in England and Wales making upskirting a criminal offence. Upskirting involves taking a photo or video under a person’s…

Planning

The merging of environment and agriculture
Local government underwent significant structural change in 2015 with the number of councils reducing from 26 to 11, and the transfer of many functions from central to local government….

Statistics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

A car involved in a road traffic collision being towed (Image: Pixabay)
It is difficult to grasp the full extent of what is portrayed by road traffic collision statistics. Each statistic represents a human being and, in the case of those…
Further education enrolments as a proportion of the population aged 16 and over at ward level, 2013/14
Please note that the Constituency Profiles have been updated with a new layout and are available on a new page here. The Research and Information Service (RaISe) has just…
Bar chart showing population change in Northern Ireland by age band, between 2004 and 2014 (Source: NISRA (2015) Northern Ireland Population Estimates 2014)
Please note: we have posted a new version of this blog article using the most recent data, see here. This article presents a brief demographic profile of Northern Ireland,…