The Government of Northern Ireland is, generally speaking, whatever political body exercises political authority over Northern Ireland. A number of separate systems of government exist or have existed in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland was created as a separate legal entity on 3 May 1921, under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The new autonomous Northern Ireland was formed from six of the nine counties of Ulster, being four counties with unionist majorities, and Fermanagh and Tyrone two of the five Ulster counties which had nationalist majorities. In large part unionists, at least in the north east region, supported its creation while nationalists were opposed. Subsequently, on 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland became an independent dominion known as the Irish Free State but Northern Ireland immediately exercised its right to opt out of the new Dominion.
The first government of Northern Ireland was the Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland, which exercised such authority from 1922 to 1972. A Northern Ireland Executive was created following the signing of the Sunningdale Agreement in 1974, while the current Northern Ireland Executive under the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, was created in the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, and has intermittently been in existence from 1998 to the present. Northern Ireland has also been governed by ministers under the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland during periods of Direct Rule.
Famous quotes containing the words northern ireland, government of, government, northern and/or ireland:
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.”
—John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850)
“We have passed the time of ... the laisser-faire [sic] school which believes that the government ought to do nothing but run a police force.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“There is no topic ... more soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)