How will the fledgling Northern Ireland Assembly fare post Paisley? asks Seamus Burns
The recent announcement by Ian Paisley that he was resigning his dual leadership roles, as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Executive and as Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader, almost a year after the restoration of a devolved power-sharing Assembly based in Stormont, Belfast, is perhaps an apposite time to assess the successes of the latest (hopefully permanent) attempt at devolving law-making powers to a region in the UK, and also to evaluate the robustness of institutionalised power-sharing as it meets the myriad challenges confronting the fledgling Assembly.
A Working Assembly
Since the Assembly's latest resurrection and reincarnation last May, the Assembly members (MLAs) have been exercising their new-found law-making powers to pass primary legislation under the Northern Ireland Act 1998 (NIA 1998)—effectively the written constitution of Northern Ireland.
Areas that the Assembly has no jurisdiction to legislate on—excepted matters—are defined fully in NIA 1998, Sch 2 and include: the Crown; the UK Parliament; Parliamentary elections;
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