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Standing Orders of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

1. Standing Orders detail the procedures which govern the way the Northern Ireland Assembly carries out its functions. At present there are 75 Standing Orders and they range from detailing the times the Assembly sits to the rules concerning members conduct.

2. Standing Orders are based primarily on the requirements of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 but they are also based on the practice and procedures in other parliaments most notably Westminster. The importance of Standing Orders is reinforced by the requirement in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 that amendments can only be made if they carry cross community support.

3. To date 66 amendments have been made to Standing Orders and these can be accessed below. The vast majority of these have been proposed by the Committee on Procedures which was established in February 2000, to continuously review Standing Orders in order to improve the procedures used in the Assembly.

4. A printed version of Standing Orders can be purchased from The Stationary Office, 16 Arthur Street, Belfast. Recent amendments to Standing Orders can be downloaded from this site for insertion into the printed version. To insert the Amendment, cut along the dotted line surrounding the text and paste carefully over the older version in the current Standing Orders.

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