Governance Blog Archive
Here you will find an archive of Governance Blog articles published before 1 May 2022, divided into their relevant categories.
Brexit
This article updates a previous article on the negotiations around the Gibraltar Protocol. Gibraltar provides an interesting point of comparison with Northern Ireland in terms of arrangements following the…
John Locke once wrote, ‘we should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, signs of our ideas only,…
The Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol (‘the Protocol’) was the subject of a judicial review challenge at the High Court of Justice in Belfast. The hearing, which stretched over several days,…
Democracy and Government
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…
The 2016-21 mandate begins in the midst of significant institutional reform….
On 5 May voters went to the polls to elect 108 Members to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Elections in Northern Ireland are an excepted matter, meaning the UK Parliament…
Justice
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)….
The draft Programme for Government contains a commitment to running a pilot family drug and alcohol court in Northern Ireland. Such courts have been used in England for some…
The past seven days have seen significant developments in relation to EU referendum related action in the courts at both local and UK level. This article provides an update…
Planning
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…
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…
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)
Measures which show the spatial distribution of deprivation have been used in Northern Ireland since the 1990s, and play a prominent role in terms of informing the targeting of…
Our blog has just published its 100th article. The Assembly Research and Information Service launched Research Matters in May 2016 in order to provide short, topical articles on recent…
To mark World GIS day, this article will look at how the Northern Ireland Assembly uses GIS to communicate data in effective and engaging ways. What is Geographic Information…