Agreement at Hillsborough Castle

After 12 days of intense negotiation talks at Hillsborough Castle over the devolution of powers to the Northern Irish Assembly finally reached an agreement on Friday (05/02). Compared to the high drama of the talks the agreement itself is actually very dull and can be read in full here;

http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/agreement

While it includes some of the usual bureaucratic matters such unfinished business and suggestions of how tweak the political process to avoid further delays and future unfinished business the agreement concentrates on two main topics. The devolution of policing and justice powers and the controversial issue of parades.

On the issue of devolution both parties agreed to set up a Northern Irish Department of Justice (DoJ). As is the case in pretty much every democratic country the DoJ will have responsibility for criminals. This includes the running of prisons, non-custodial punishments like community service and offender management programs like probation, bail hostels and the sex offenders register. It will also serve to protect the rights of victims of crime through victim support and criminal injury compensation services. The DoJ though does not have any direct responsibility for either the judiciary or the police. This independence for the police and courts is again pretty much standard in modern democracies as it is important to prevent politicians from only appointing judges and police chiefs who are too scared to prosecute politicians who break the law.

The DoJ itself will be headed by a Minister of Justice (MoJ) who will have full operational control over the department and sole discretion on quasi-judicial decisions like sentencing guidelines. On more general items of assembly business the MoJ will have equal status and say as other ministers. The big difference is that unlike in other parliaments where ministerial jobs are appointed by the leader of the largest party normally to members of that same party the Northern Irish MoJ will be chosen by a cross-community vote in the assembly. This means that any member of the assembly who wants the job can apply and the one who gets the most votes from the other members of the assembly gets the job. Of course this means that the largest party still has the most say in who will be the MoJ but that is just a problem of parliamentary democracy. Putting the matter to a free vote though is certainly more fair then having the leader of a Loyalist of Republican party simply appointing a MoJ.

As with all aspects of devolution this arrangement still needs to be endorsed by a public referendum that will take place on March 9th, 2010. As there have been no major changes to suggested model of devolved powers and the agreement seems to have broad support this is highly likely to happen and the new DoJ will come into being on April 12th, 2010.

On the issue of parades both parties have agreed to replace the Parades Commission. Instead they will set up a co-chaired, 6 member working group to produce a mechanism to resolve disputes that arise from these parades. The new mechanism will concentrate on bringing the members of the group that wants to parade together with residents of the area that is going to be paraded through in order to mediate a compromise. If no such local resolution can be found the mechanism will include an independent and transparent adjudication board made up of local and legal experts who will have final say how and if a parade can take place. The working group will report back to the assembly in three weeks and it's proposals will become a bill before hopefully becoming law by December 2010.

As the mechanism for dealing with parades has yet to be written it is a little difficult to tell how effective it will be. However as it is based on local resolution it looks very promising. This is because although parades are a contentious and symbolic issue there are actually only about half a dozen parades that cause problems and those problems only directly a few thousand. Therefore allowing these people to solve these problems amongst themselves is far more likely to succeed then having those problems blown out of all proportion by national and international politicians.

All things considered the Hillsborough agreement represents a compromise over some very technical issues in which nobody won and nobody lost making it very difficult to get excited about. It is though a very sensible compromise that keeps the devolution process on track and marks another important step towards a future where Northern Irish politics is dominated by pedestrian issues like the economy and health-care spending.