Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly

Reform of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement: Introduction

2025-11-24T11:11:23+00:00

Introduction to the special issue: 'Reform of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement'.

Reforming the 1998 Agreement institutions: the state of the debate

2025-11-24T11:14:16+00:00

Comment on the state of the debate on reforming the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement institutions.

Stormont: from rights-based safeguards to political vetoes – has the intention of the Good Friday Agreement been turned on its head?

2025-02-17T12:48:22+00:00

In a speech at the time of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (GFA), Mary Robinson, then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, remarked that the new Agreement was ‘conspicuous by the centrality it gives to equality and human rights concerns’. The GFA expressly provided that Executive and Legislative authority was to be ‘subject to safeguards to protect the rights and interests of all sides of the community’. Such safeguards included the codified incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into Northern Ireland law, undertaken through the Human Rights Act 1998 and the devolution statute. The GFA also provided for an ECHR+ ‘Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland’, envisaged as a similar set of objective human rights legal safeguards binding in a similar manner. In turn, these were to link into the flagship safeguard over the legislature – the ‘petition of concern’ (PoC) – the tabling of which was to trigger an Ad Hoc Committee on Conformity with Equality Requirements to scrutinise conformity with the ECHR and Bill of Rights. The GFA also led to Northern Ireland public authorities being bound by what became the ‘section 75’ equality duty, envisaged as an objective policy appraisal tool to equality impact assess whether proposed policies risked discriminatory detriment against nine protected grounds, and if so to prompt consideration of alternative policies.
This article will reflect, over a quarter of a century on, as to the fate of these commitments and subsequent developments. The Bill of Rights was never legislated for and remains outstanding. The PoC was ‘mis-legislated’ for to the extent it has never once been able to trigger the specialist committee. During the 2011–2016 mandate it became the veto of choice, being tabled over 100 times, including to block rights and equality-based measures. To a chorus of criticism from the Council of Europe, the ‘section 75’ duty also regressed following the invention and integration of ‘good relations’ impact assessments within its paradigm, which in turn provided a blocking mechanism for rights-based policy deemed politically contentious. Furthermore, a new veto over ministerial decision-making was introduced by the St Andrews Agreement, not grounded in objective-rights based criteria but rather on whether a decision was ‘significant’ or ‘controversial’. This ‘St Andrews Veto’ required such decisions to be taken by the full Northern Ireland Executive, with three ministers able to compel a ‘cross-community’ vote, and as such was used to veto proposals on same-sex marriage, reproductive rights and minority language rights. In 2014, legal certainty over a new minority rights veto in local councils (‘call in’) was also set back when a PoC blocked definitional secondary legislation. This increased the risk of call in becoming a further political veto over rights.
Combined, these developments prompt the question as to whether the intention of the GFA has been turned on its head. This article will further explore the experience of each of the mechanisms (ECHR/Bill of Rights; PoC; St Andrews Veto; Executive Agenda Veto; call in; equality impact assessments and the ‘good relations’ duty; and the revised Ministerial Code) and their impact on the governance and viability of Stormont.

Reform of a constitutional fundamental: the principle of cross-community consent and Northern Ireland’s governance

2025-03-27T14:38:12+00:00

This article takes a critical look at calls for reform of the principle of cross-community consent (the consent principle) as it operates in Northern Ireland’s post-1998 constitutional order. The consent principle requires that nationalists and unionists exercise power in a way that reflects a significant level of agreement from both communities’ representatives. I argue that intensifying calls for significant moderation of the consent principle within a wider debate on reform of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement framework cut against constitutional principle and, as currently framed, do not reflect political reality. Further, the article criticises the significant degree of unilateral reform – that is, amendment driven by the United Kingdom Government without cross-community support from the main Northern Ireland political parties – in recent years of the procedural devices embodying the consent principle. In doing so, I consider how varying interpretive methods have been applied by the courts in recent cases concerning the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. A mix of positivist interpretivism and broad purposivism has combined to create contingency in constitutional principle. On the application of either a textualist or realist approach to the consent principle, it ought to be clear that, at a minimum, its abridgement requires the support of political representatives on both sides of the sectarian divide. Moreover, placing those disputes in the hands of the judiciary reduces the consent principle’s reforming power: the doctrine, properly understood, operates as more than merely a regulatory constraint because of its capacity to enlarge Northern Ireland’s powers of self-government.

Triple Consent? Parties, people and Parliament: reforming the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement

2025-07-15T16:17:38+00:00

This article examines the political and legislative hurdles which are necessary to clear before reforming the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. It does so by looking at the Agreement itself and subsequent changes, most notably the St Andrews Agreement (2006), New Decade, New Approach (2020) and Safeguarding the Union (2024). To summarise, there are generally three requirements for change:

Agreement between political parties represented in the Northern Ireland Assembly. If substantial agreement does not exist, then the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement cannot be reformed.
Agreement between London and Dublin. Given that the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland are viewed as co-guarantors of the Agreement, bilateral consent is also essential.
Agreement between the main Great Britain parties at Westminster (usually Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats), given that any changes often require primary legislation in the UK Parliament.

After examining the origins of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and subsequent revisions, the article posits that a hitherto overlooked constitutional convention guides the process of amendment.

Brexit and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement: the case for reform amid evolving political, legal, and international norms

2025-03-06T11:34:37+00:00

This article offers an appraisal of the case for reform of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in the light of international law. It begins with an appraisal of the Agreement’s performance after almost three decades of practice and the challenges that have been posed by intervening events, with Brexit the most obvious and pertinent example. The Agreement is then examined from the perspective of international law, and through the lens of Articles 2(3) and 33 of the United Nations Charter, as an example of peaceful dispute settlement. It is posited that the obligation to peacefully settle disputes is not a static one, but one that evolves over time, and that good faith adherence to this obligation may require both monitoring and updating of existing agreements in the light of intervening events. In this context, the respective shifts in position by the United Kingdom, Ireland and the European Union are all germane and must be taken into account if any revised agreement is to adequately affect the new status quo and thus preserve the delicate peace originally brought about by the Agreement. The article proposes that the original framework of the Agreement can no longer be assumed to function as intended, which necessitates not only a careful reassessment of the Agreement’s terms but also a willingness to consider innovative approaches that respond to current realities.

The reform of the institutions created by the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement and treaty amendment: an example of the interplay between a treaty and a non-legally binding agreement

2025-01-09T11:23:53+00:00

This article will focus on aspects of the reform of the institutions created by the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement which relate to the law of treaties. It will examine the relationship between the British–Irish Agreement (BIA) and the Multi-Party Agreement and the effect of this relationship a) on the question of whether a reform of the institutions established by the Multi-Party Agreement requires the amendment of the BIA and b) on the distinction between interpretation and amendment in subsequent agreements and subsequent practice related to the BIA. It will argue that whether the BIA will need to be amended depends on whether the reform affects institutions under Strand One or also under Strands Two and Three and also on the extent and the nature of the reforms to the institutions, in view of the provisions of the BIA as interpreted in light of its object and purpose.

Unilateral change to the institutions of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement

2025-04-15T10:25:26+00:00

This article analyses the international legal obligations imposed on the United Kingdom (UK) and Irish Governments by the 1998 British-Irish Agreement (BIA) – the bilateral international treaty concluded between the two Governments as part of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement – and how they affect the manner in which different changes to the 1998 Agreement may be made. In particular, the article seeks to identify the outer limits imposed by the BIA on the sovereign Government’s ability to make unilateral changes to the Strand One institutions that depart from the 1998 text of the Multi-Party Agreement. Based on an analysis of the subsequent practice of the UK and Ireland since 1998, applying the international law rules of treaty interpretation, it is argued that while changes to the Strand Two or Three institutions will require the conclusion of a treaty or interpretative declaration by the two Governments to amend their obligations under the BIA and its implementing treaties, at least certain changes to Strand One institutions will not require action on the international plane to modify the BIA, due to the ambulatory nature of the obligation in Article 2 BIA. The article concludes by considering the limits on the ability of the sovereign Government to change the Strand One institutions unilaterally, and the implications of this analysis for reform of the 1998 Agreement, and for the governance of Northern Ireland within a united Ireland.

Contested pathways to security normalisation in Northern Ireland

2025-07-30T13:08:48+00:00

This article examines the progress made in Northern Ireland towards normalisation of the security arrangements as required under the Good Friday Agreement 1998 in relation to two major areas of continuing deviation: non-jury trials and stop and search powers. The first section examines what ‘normalisation’ means. The article details the challenges these measures present to constitutional norms; their justifications, historically and contemporarily; and the reasons for their persistence. It then explores the options towards normalisation, concluding that it is attainable in relation to non-jury trials and stop and search powers and that these measures should be abolished.

An alternative Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland, in instalments: Assembly incorporation of international rights instruments

2025-07-30T13:09:15+00:00

The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement 1998 emphasised human rights, ‘incorporating’ the European Convention on Human Rights and proposing a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights and a potential Charter of Rights for Ireland. However, amid political disagreement no progress has been made towards these goals and rights and equality protections have come to lag behind the United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland in important respects. Meanwhile, Scotland and Wales have advanced novel rights protections. Wales integrated the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into its public administration in 2011, and Scotland followed with an even more ambitious scheme in 2024. This latter development has been presented as a prelude towards embedding a swathe of international rights instruments which the UK has signed up to, but which Westminster has not incorporated, into Scots law. These initiatives demonstrate how devolved legislatures can advance rights within their jurisdictions, providing a fresh opportunity to explore options for Northern Ireland. Specific measures incorporating international human rights treaties could potentially enhance Northern Ireland’s lawmakers’ understanding of rights issues and help to counter existing obstacles to progress on rights and equality issues.

The Future of Peace: Incorporation of Intergenerational Equity and Justice in Peace Treaties and Reconciliation Agreements by Alexandra Harrington

2025-06-27T13:47:16+00:00

A review of The Future of Peace: Incorporation of Intergenerational Equity and Justice in Peace Treaties and Reconciliation Agreements by Alexandra Harrington (Edward Elgar 2023).