The Ceann Comhairle is the chairperson of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (parliament) of Ireland. The person who holds the position is elected by members of the Dáil from among their number in the first session after each general election. The Ceann Comhairle since 10 March 2016 has been Seán Ó Fearghaíl, Fianna Fáil TD. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle since 23 July 2020 has been Catherine Connolly, Independent TD.
The Northern Ireland Assembly, often referred to by the metonym Stormont, is the devolved legislature of Northern Ireland. It has power to legislate in a wide range of areas that are not explicitly reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and to appoint the Northern Ireland Executive. It sits at Parliament Buildings at Stormont in Belfast.
The president of the Senate is the presiding officer of the Australian Senate, the upper house of the Parliament of Australia. The counterpart in the lower house is the speaker of the House of Representatives. The office of the presidency of the senate was established in 1901 by section 17 of the Constitution of Australia. The primary responsibilities of the office is to oversee senate debates, determine which senators may speak, maintain order and the parliamentary code of conduct during sessions and uphold all rules and orders of the senate. The current president is Sue Lines, who was elected on 26 July 2022.
The Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), or simply Alliance, is a liberal and centrist political party in Northern Ireland. Following the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, it was the third-largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding seventeen seats, and broke through by placing third in first preference votes in the 2019 European Parliament election and polling third-highest regionally at the 2019 UK general election. The party won one of the three Northern Ireland seats in the European Parliament, and one seat, North Down, in the House of Commons, the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The speaker of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body, is its presiding officer, or the chair. The title was first used in 1377 in England.
In parliamentary procedure, a division of the assembly, division of the house, or simply division is a method of taking a vote that physically counts members voting.
John Thomas Alderdice, Baron Alderdice is a Northern Ireland politician. He was the Speaker and a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for East Belfast from 1998 to 2004 and 1998 to 2003, respectively. Alderdice was the leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland from 1987 to 1998, and since 1996 has sat in the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat.
Thomas David Simpson is a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician in Northern Ireland, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Upper Bann from 2005 to 2019. On 6 November 2019 Simpson announced that he would not be standing for re-election in the 2019 general election.
Naomi Rachel Long MLA is a Northern Irish politician who has served as Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive since February 2024, having previously served from January 2020 to October 2022. She has served as leader of the Alliance Party since 2016 and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East since 2020.
College Green, a division of the parliamentary borough of Dublin, was a parliamentary constituency which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1885 until 1922. From 1918 to 1921, it was also used a constituency for Dáil Éireann
National University of Ireland (NUI) is a university constituency in Ireland, which elects three senators to Seanad Éireann, the senate of the Oireachtas. Its electorate is the graduates of the university, which has a number of constituent universities. It previously elected members to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom (1918–1921), to the House of Commons of Southern Ireland (1921) and to Dáil Éireann (1918–1936).
The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia is the presiding officer of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.
Francis Joseph Molloy is an Irish Sinn Féin politician who has been the abstentionist Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster since 2013. He was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for Mid Ulster from 1998 to 2013.
The First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland are the joint heads of government of Northern Ireland, leading the Northern Ireland Executive and with overall responsibility for the running of the Executive Office. Despite the titles of the two offices, the two positions have the same governmental power, resulting in a duumvirate; the deputy First Minister, customarily spelled with a lowercase d, is not subordinate to the First Minister. Created under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, both were initially nominated and appointed by members of the Northern Ireland Assembly on a joint ticket by a cross-community vote, under consociational principles. That process was changed following the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, such that the First Minister now is nominated by the largest party overall, and the deputy First Minister is nominated by the largest party from the next largest community block.
The 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election took place on Thursday, 5 May, following the dissolution of the Northern Ireland Assembly at midnight on 24 March 2011. It was the fourth election to take place since the devolved assembly was established in 1998.
The 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2016. It was the fifth election to take place since the devolved assembly was established in 1998. 1,281,595 individuals were registered to vote in the election. Turnout in the 2016 Assembly election was 703,744 (54.9%), a decline of less than one percentage point from the previous Assembly Election in 2011, but down 15 percentage points from the first election to the Assembly held in 1998.
A by-election for the UK House of Commons constituency of Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland was held on 7 March 2013. The election was triggered by the resignation of Martin McGuinness, who had been elected to the seat in 1997 as the Sinn Féin candidate. The election was won by Francie Molloy, also of Sinn Féin.
The North/South Inter-Parliamentary Association is an inter-parliamentary forum created between the national parliament of the Republic of Ireland and the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly.
Dáil Éireann is the lower house, and principal chamber, of the Oireachtas, which also includes the president of Ireland and a senate called Seanad Éireann. It consists of 160 members, each known as a Teachta Dála. TDs represent 39 constituencies and are directly elected for terms not exceeding five years, on the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote (PR-STV). Its powers are similar to those of lower houses under many other bicameral parliamentary systems and it is by far the dominant branch of the Oireachtas. Subject to the limits imposed by the Constitution of Ireland, it has power to pass any law it wishes, and to nominate and remove the Taoiseach. Since 1922, it has met in Leinster House in Dublin.
The 2020 election of the Ceann Comhairle took place on 20 February 2020 at the commencement of the 33rd Dáil. It was the second election to be performed by secret ballot.
