Contact Details
Simon Burrowes
Editor of Debates
Northern Ireland Assembly
Parliament Buildings
Belfast BT4 3XX
Tel:+44 (0) 2890521135
Fax:+44 (0) 2890521229
Email:
simon.burrowes@niassembly.gov.uk
Website:
http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/
Northern Ireland Assembly
Official Report (Hansard)
Although the official title of the Northern Ireland publication is Official Report, Members and staff alike refer to it as Hansard- and, indeed, Hansard appears on the front cover of the daily book.
The Office of the Official Report covers plenary sittings of the Assembly and Committee meetings that are part of the legislative process or which are evidence sessions linked to the publication of a Committee report.
The daily report of Assembly sittings is available the next morning in hard copy and also on the internet. A bound volume of reports is also published.
Members are reported in the language they use - so from time to time speeches are reported in Irish and Ulster Scots. The Office also provides the Speaker with a simultaneous interpretation service for those languages during plenary sittings.
The Hansard office works under the direction of the Editor of Debates and includes a Deputy Editor, Assistant Editors, Parliamentary Reporters, word-processing operators and administrative staff.
Whenever the Assembly is sitting, a Parliamentary Reporter sits in on the proceedings (which are also tape recorded) for a period of five minutes and writes a log of what goes on. That log identifies the Members who speak and contains brief details of what they say, including any difficult words and phrases, quotations and statistics. At the end of their "take" staff compile an edited transcript of everything that happened, which is then sent to an Assistant Editor for checking. When the Assembly has finished its business, all the takes are brought together and given a final check. The full report is then sent for printing and is available in printed form at 8.30 am the next day and is also published on the Assembly's website.
