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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

An image showing the Chamber of the House of Commons
The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill returns to the House of Commons this week. MPs will consider the Bill in a Committee of the whole House. The Bill repeals the European…
Image by Professor Glenn D Wilson, used under Creative Commons
Mutual recognition and co-operation underpin many EU law provisions. This article looks at some of the legislative options for one particular provision following Brexit; the European Arrest Warrant (EAW)….
Strangford Lough from Scrabo Hill (Image: Colin Park under Creative Commons)
As the Prime Minister prepares to trigger Article 50, this blog post looks at the potential consequences for environmental standards here in Northern Ireland….

Democracy and Government

A polling station (Image: Paul Albertella under Creative Commons)
The fifth Assembly election since the return of devolution in 1998 took place on 5 May 2016. The DUP consolidated its position as the largest party in Northern Ireland…
Rathlin Island, one of 57 SACs in Northern Ireland (Image: Colin Park under Creative Commons Licence)
How might leaving the European Union impact on environmental policy, funding and legislation in Northern Ireland?…
Royal Courts of Justice, Belfast, incorporating the High Court (Image: Suzanne Mischyshyn, Creative Commons)
This week has seen a number of announcements made which will have a bearing on the process of UK withdrawal from the EU….

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

An aerial view of the Peace Bridge in Derry/Londonderry
This article explores the temporary planning measures introduced as a response to COVID-19 across the UK and Republic of Ireland (ROI). Some of these measures have, and will, require…
An image of the Peace Bridge in Derry/Londonderry
This blog article examines the similarities and differences between the planning systems north and south of the border on the island of Ireland. It is based on a more…
Image of a planned urban landscape: Local development planning is now with local councils
The planning system has undergone much change recently, so what are the new structures and how has the balance of responsibility shifted between central and local government?…

Statistics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

An image showing COVID-19 statistics on a computer screen
  The risk is that a complicated number is released without context into a world that doesn’t know how to think about it. The ‘R number’ that most of…
A line graph comparing COVID-19 deaths (five day moving averages) per million population for selected countries; five day moving averages include two days either side of date shown in chart (e.g. moving aveage for 14 April is an average taken over the five days 12-16 April).
  This is a follow-up to the recent blog article, ‘Where are we on the COVID-19 curve?. The previous article used three day averages for COVID-19 deaths to compare…
  Most of us by now understand the need to ‘flatten the curve’ in order to reduce the number of overall cases of COVID-19 and to keep the peak…