The Stormont Papers: 50 Years of Northern Ireland Parliamentary Debates Online

From 1921 to 1972, Northern Ireland was under the administrative control of a devolved parliament based at Stormont. This digitised archive holds 92,000 pages that cover and document this key time in Northern Ireland’s history.

The papers follow the Hansard model - the verbatim reporting of debates in the UK Houses of Parliament, which are released on a daily basis – and contain indexes of information on bills, speakers, MPs, cabinet members and parliamentary officers to further aid research. Biographies of key members of parliament are also available within the ‘Context’ section of the archive’s website.

How can this collection be used in teaching, studying and research?

This collection is of particular interest to those studying, teaching or researching Northern Irish history, 20th century UK history, political history or the protocols and administrative models of devolved government.

Visitors can search for key moments and acts to further explore repercussions within the government and learn more about points of debate and contemporary reactions to events and crises.

Highlights from this collection

Reactions to the events of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Derry in 1972 close to the end of the life of the devolved government, and the transcript of the moment politician Jack Beattie threw the parliamentary mace to the floor to protest about mass unemployment and poverty in Northern Ireland in 1932.