could you please tell me exactly what´s going on in Northern Ireland?

May 2021 2 84 Report

could you please tell me exactly what´s going on in Northern Ireland?

I wanna know what the current situation is, especially what has happened with the joint Assembly - if after all Sin Feinn and the Unionists are working together and the names of those representatives of the ruling parties in NI.

Please, brief and concise answers!

News & Events / Current Events

Donncha Rua

Verified answer

There are five main parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly. In order of electoral support, they are:

1. Democratic Unionist Party

2. Sinn Féin

3. Ulster Unionist Party

4. Social Democratic and Labour Party

5. Alliance Party.

Parties (1) and (3) get their support mainly from the protestant community. Parties (2) and (4) get their support mainly from the catholic community. Party (5) gets support from catholic and protestant, and is de facto a pro-unionist party.

Power, in terms of ministers of government, is distributed according to the d'Hondt system according to a party's strength in the assembly, as follows:

DUP: 4

SF: 3

UUP: 2

SDLP: 1

The Alliance party isn't big enough to be enitled to a ministership.

For each ministership there is a system of committees composed of different party members, so no party has the complete monopoly of any ministership.

So far, they seem quite happy but it's early days yet.