Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)
representative elected by the voters to the Northern Ireland Assembly in Northern Ireland
Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs; Irish: Comhaltaí den Tionól Reachtach; Ulster Scots: Laa-Makkan Forgaitherars) are representatives elected by the voters to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
About
The Northern Ireland Assembly has 90 elected members – five from each of 18 constituencies, the boundaries of which are the same as those used for electing members of the UK Parliament. Its role is primarily to scrutinise and make decisions on the issues dealt with by Government Departments and to consider and make legislation.
Responsibilities
MLAs are responsible for representing their constituents in the Northern Ireland Assembly, and may also hold a number of executive roles within the Northern Ireland Executive.
MLAs are also responsible for proposing, debating, and voting on law in policy areas devolved to the Assembly.
MLAs may also be present on committees relating to specific policy areas, intended to serve a scrutiny function, and to examine bills within that subject area as part of the process of the bill becoming a law.
Salary
The basic salary for an MLA is £55,000, while the Speaker, ministers and committee chairs receive an additional 'Office Holders Salary' on top of their basic salary.
History
Previous similar legislators
From 22 June 1921 until 30 March 1972, MPs of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland and Senators of the Senate of Northern Ireland in the Parliament of Northern Ireland legislated for Northern Ireland like MLAs do today.
Northern Ireland Assembly legislators
Following a referendum on the Belfast Agreement on 23 May 1998 and the granting of Royal Assent to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 on 19 November 1998; a Northern Ireland Assembly and Northern Ireland Executive were established by the Labour government of Prime Minister Tony Blair. The process was known as devolution and was set up to give Northern Ireland devolved legislative powers.
The public source identifies “Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)” as representative elected by the voters to the Northern Ireland Assembly in Northern Ireland. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Member, Legislative and Assembly.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3272410. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1972 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.