The Northern Ireland Forum for Political Dialogue was a body set up in 1996 as part of a process of negotiations that eventually led to the

Good Friday Agreement The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), or Belfast Agreement ( ga, Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta or ; Ulster-Scots: or ), is a pair of agreements signed on 10 April 1998 that ended most of the violence of The Troubles, a political conflict in No ...

in 1998. The forum was elected, with five members being elected for each Westminster Parliamentary constituency for Northern Ireland, under the

D'Hondt method The D'Hondt method, also called the Jefferson method or the greatest divisors method, is a method for allocating seats in parliaments among federal states, or in party-list proportional representation systems. It belongs to the class of highest ...

party-list proportional representation Party-list proportional representation (list-PR) is a subset of proportional representation electoral systems in which multiple candidates are elected (e.g., elections to parliament) through their position on an electoral list. They can also be us ...

. There was also a "topup" of two seats for the ten parties polling most votes; this ensured that two loyalist parties associated with paramilitary groups were represented. See members of the Northern Ireland Forum for a complete list.

Election results

The results of the election were: ''All parties shown.'' Note: The Democratic Unionist Party was listed on the ballot paper as " Democratic Unionist Party DUP Ian Paisley" Northern Ireland Forum Seats

List candidates

Top-up candidates were elected from lists supplied by each party. The highest-placed candidates who had not already won election through a constituency won the top-up seats. In the table below, the top-up candidates elected through the regional list are shown in bold, while candidates elected in constituencies are shown in ''italics''. Candidates in normal type were not elected.

Votes summary

Seats summary

References

Bibliography

Northern Ireland (Entry to Negotiations, etc) Act 1996
by Nicholas Whyte

External links

Official site
{{United Kingdom local elections, 1996 General elections in Northern Ireland History of Northern Ireland May 1996 events in the United Kingdom 1996 elections in Northern Ireland