The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was the de facto head of the Government of Northern Ireland. No such office was provided for in the Government of Ireland Act 1920, however the Lord Lieutenant, as with Governors-General in other Westminster Systems such as in Canada, chose to appoint someone to head the executive even though no such post existed in statute law. The office-holder assumed the title Prime Minister to draw parallels with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. On the advice of the new Prime Minister, the Lord Lieutenant then created the Department of the Prime Minister. The office of Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was abolished in 1972, along with the contemporary government, when direct rule of Northern Ireland was transferred to London.
The Government of Ireland Act provided for the appointment of the Executive Committee of the Privy Council by the Governor. No parliamentary vote was required. Nor, theoretically, was the Executive Committee and its prime minister responsible to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland. In reality the Governor chose the leader of the party with a majority in the House to form a government. On each occasion this was the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, such was the UUP's electoral dominance using both a simple plurality and for the first two elections, a proportional electoral system.
The Prime Minister's residence from 1920 until 1922 was Cabin Hill, later to become the junior school for Campbell College. After 1922 Stormont Castle was used, though some prime ministers chose to live in Stormont House, the unused residence of the Speaker of the House of Commons.
The new offices of First Minister and deputy First Minister were created by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In contrast with the Westminster-style system of the earlier Stormont government, the new Northern Ireland Executive operates on the principles of consociational democracy.
Read more about Prime Minister Of Northern Ireland: Prime Ministers, Parliamentary Secretary, Department of The Prime Minister, Additional Parliamentary Secretary, Department of The Prime Minister, Sources
Famous quotes containing the words prime minister, prime, minister, northern and/or ireland:
“No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the fraught bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“‘What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I,
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;”
—Walter De La Mare (1873–1956)
“There is no topic ... more soporific and generally boring than the topic of Ireland as Ireland, as a nation.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)