Main parties in the assembly have been seen to combine their parties and make what is known as a “supermajority” this can be seen as the parties in the assembly cooperating and using their majority for the interests of Northern Ireland.
The new assembly can be seen as a very functional one, the growth in confidence has made their work more clear and easy so they are better suited for their task. The assembly committees have improved in the new assembly; they are one aspect of the assembly that carries out their role to a degree of satisfaction. These committees have five main roles which are outlined in source B. These roles are scrutiny, policy, initiating legislation, advice and to initiate inquires and make reports. Although the committees are making progress in some of their role they have also been neglecting to take full advantage on some of their work. Initiation of legislation is one of the roles implemented in Source B, yet to this day a committee has not used this role. It may be inexperience or mayhap they have had no need to use it but it is clear that committees have not been fulfilling all 5 of their tasks in the assembly. Out of these 5 roles allocated to the assembly 1 is not used, initiation of legislation, yet although this is not used the committees have another 4 roles which can be argued as more important. Scrutiny being one of these roles has been used by the committees in the assembly many times. During the years of 1999 until 2002 the committees have scrutinized over 600 statutory rules. And in that period through the scrutiny of the budged the committee for education found a gap in the budget for rural schools with less that 100 pupils, the minister accepted the committee’s recommendation and in 2002/03 spent £2 million and a further £4 million in 2003/04 on these small rural schools.
Committees certainly do a lot of work but can all this work lead to an overload. At the start of each year a forward work programme is drawn up, this will build time so that the committees can properly fulfil all of their roles, but this means that committees must be selective about the issues they will look at, they will not be able to look at as many issues as they did in the past. This meaning that all the larger issues will be dealt with and some of the smaller issues will be left to hang for a while until time can be made.
In debates, question time etc. Minister will find ways of deliberately trying to damage other party’s reputation any chance they get. Sometimes differences in parties may creep into a debate or question, this can lead away from the key focus and leads away from the subject. This is not just exclusive to Northern Ireland politics but can be seen to an extent as a certain case were these differences are a serious issue because of the history of Northern Ireland. Other aspects may creep into the assembly that can damage the work needed to be done by minister. In an important cross-community decision, a vote must have a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists, without either one the vote will not count. Although it can be said that the Sinn Fein, holding a majority of nationalists, and the Democratic unionist party, having the majority of unionists, can make the vote count on their own without having the help from other nationalist and unionist parties. Each party has to choose between “Nationalist” “unionist” and “other” and a lot of speculation has been drawn up about the alliance party as entrenching sectarian divisions.
The assembly have been “shaky” in the past, but over time they have learned to work together and more importantly built a relationship that hopefully in the future will keep building. Aspects of the assembly can still be seen as unsure or even having a lack of confidence, but most aspects could have been seen like that not too long ago, with time they too will gain experience and build the confidence needed.
