Debate contribution: First Minister and deputy First Minister Titles

Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on 9 March 2026.

MLA

Dr Steve Aiken OBE

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

9 March 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

First Minister and deputy First Minister Titles

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5452952

Read the official Assembly record

Text

The Ulster Unionist Party welcomes the motion but will not support the amendment. We need to look at the true intent of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. I recently appeared in the media with the leader of the SDLP, when we talked about moving back to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement's factory settings. In particular, strand one of the agreement talks about:

"Executive authority to be discharged on behalf of the Assembly by a First Minister and Deputy First Minister and up to ten Ministers with Departmental responsibilities."

It then clearly says:

"The First Minister and Deputy First Minister shall be jointly elected into office by the Assembly voting on a cross-community basis"

this, by

"parallel consent, i.e. a majority of those members present and voting, including a majority of the unionist and nationalist designations present and voting".

That was a fundamental shift away from what had gone before. After decades of violence and terror, the Assembly was designed to work with a degree of consensus and with the support of all in it. Unfortunately and regrettably, after almost every other discussion thereafter, particularly since the St Andrews Agreement, much of that consensus has been broken. Frankly, the aim of the likes of the St Andrews Agreement was to turn what had been the intent of consensus through the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement into two-party majoritarianism. Consensus is difficult enough to achieve with a mandatory coalition, but that consensus was broken at St Andrews.

I thank the Member for his remarks. I remember attending an event at Yale University with various others, including the late, lamented ex-Principal Deputy Speaker Christopher Stalford. The event included a series of discussions about the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, and there was a certain person there who, I must admit that I had not realised, had been so central to the discussions leading to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. That was Peter Robinson. Peter Robinson, throughout the discussions at that event, talked clearly about the importance of what the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement did and, indeed, about the influence that he had had on it. He also talked on many occasions about the consensus that grew from it. I was then the leader of Ulster Unionist Party, and I was so surprised by what he said that I stood up and said, "I'm Steve Aiken, and I never realised that Peter Robinson was a supporter of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement". There were about 150 people in the audience at that event, including about 100 from Northern Ireland, and all that I heard were guffaws. To claim that improvements were made to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement at St Andrews is false. I do not think that anybody considers the St Andrews Agreement to have made the circumstances better. The beauty of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was the consensus in it. How do you perform the difficult balancing act of having consensus and a mandatory coalition when, frankly, the parties that are in government are just as much in opposition to the other parties in government as they are with them? It does not seem to work, but, for the people of Northern Ireland, there has to be an idea that they can look to. Our party has thought about that, and Mike Nesbitt as leader talked about that quite a long time ago. All that we are saying is that the First Minister and deputy First Minister posts are coequal. In 2016, as we all sat here and listened to a debate just as the Assembly was about to come down, it became clear not only that the positions were coequal but that, bearing in mind the confusion that most people had when talking about the two leaders at the time, it was probably more appropriate to call them co-leaders. We know that most elections in Northern Ireland tend to be a case of voters being told, "Vote for us-uns, or you will get them-uns" or "bitty fest" or whatever people do not want to see. To call them co-leaders would be a clear indication to the people of Northern Ireland that we are serious about getting the Northern Ireland Assembly to work. As I have said time and time again, let us return to the factory settings and the intent of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in order to get consensus. If we are to have the continuation of —.

Thank you, Phillip. You have raised a point that I was about to come to in the last 30 seconds of my contribution. We need an indication that we are taking the situation seriously, and one of the ways in which we can do that is by making sure that we have an example. You, Phillip, are one of the people who has talked about having a First Minister for all. We do not have a First Minister for all; that is clear. What we should have are co-First Ministers, so equal weight should be given —

— to them.

828 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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