Can the use of citizens’ assemblies transform Northern Ireland’s policy landscape?
Citizens’ assemblies have been on the rise globally as policy and decision-makers recognise the untapped potential in empowering citizens to have their say on the issues that directly impact their lives, writes Emma DeSouza, Founder and Co-Facilitator, Civic Initiative.
In the UK, over 30 deliberative democracy processes have been actioned over the past five years on topics ranging from climate change to Covid-19 recovery, other countries such as Denmark, who have been holding ‘consensus conferences’ since the 1980s, have long recognised the value of wider citizen engagement in policy and decision-making.
In an effort to demonstrate the effectiveness of deliberative democracy, and the potential for citizens’ assemblies in the context of Northern Ireland, the Civic Initiative actioned an 18-month participatory project featuring a Citizens’ Forum on Housing.
The Civic Initiative was launched during the 25th anniversary year of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement to create a space for civic voice in the absence of the long-promised Civic Forum, and subsequent commitments from political parties to facilitate greater inclusion of civic society in policy processes. The project brings together a wide range of civic society organisations, academics, and community workers who designed a four stage process; community-based forums and workshops to set the agenda, written submissions and surveys, a Citizens’ Forum, and recommendations.
For the first stage, the Civic Initiative held 34 community-based forums across Northern Ireland, and four forums in the border counties of Monaghan, Cavan, and Louth. 518 people took part in the forums, 61 per cent reported that they had not taken part in a similar workshop before. During these sessions participants self-selected the topics they wanted to discuss, and the issues related to them. Health, housing, and education were the dominant themes, followed by poverty and political institutions. The selection of housing as a key issue by communities on the ground directly led to housing being selected as the topic for a citizens’ assembly structure.
The Citizens’ Forum on Housing brought together 84 citizens recruited by UK-based NGO Sortition Foundation using a postal lottery system. 25,000 letters of invitation were mailed to households across Northern Ireland inviting members of the public to register their interest. Participants were selected to be generally representative of Northern Ireland by gender, age, geographical location, ethnicity as well as community background, and educational attainment. 49 per cent of the Forum were members from the Protestant community, 36 per cent Catholic, and 15 per cent none/other, a third of the members had a long-term health or disability limitation, and 21 per cent had either no qualifications or level 1.
Meeting over the course of three days, Forum members heard evidence and testimony from 18 expert speakers. Members drafted over 60 policy recommendations and passed 38 by a consensus vote of 80 per cent. Their recommendations spanned accessibility, affordability and sustainability, but also included education, transport, community relations, and political institutions. None of the citizens taking part had participated in a similar forum or assembly structure before.
The backdrop to the Forum meeting is a critical housing crisis; The number of households with homelessness status in Northern Ireland has more than doubled in the last decade, as of March 2025, 31,719 households were registered as homeless – an increase of 132 per cent over ten years, while 49,083 households were on the social housing waiting list in Northern Ireland.
The Citizens’ Forum on Housing agreed a shared vision that recognised the need for a holistic, cross-departmental approach to tackling the housing crisis: “To create a holistic people-centered housing system that provides accessible, affordable, safe, and energy-efficient homes to meet the needs of all individuals and households in a way that fosters greater community cohesion, and a shared sustainable future for all.”
Their recommendations included:
- legislate to allow the Northern Ireland Housing Executive to borrow and access private finance to build more homes (92 per cent in support);
- take forward an integrated approach for all new developments, to include housing, transport, green spaces and access to other public services including schools and healthcare (91 per cent);
- demolish properties deemed unfit for human habitation that cannot be redeveloped or refurbished within 18 months (85 per cent);
- seek cross-border investment from the Irish government to improve water infrastructure in Northern Ireland (85 per cent);
- remove VAT charges for renovations, upgrades and retrofitting old properties (80 per cent); and
- provide an accessible homelessness intervention hub that offers support to people who are at risk of homelessness but have not met all criteria yet (80 per cent).
The recommendation with the highest level of consensus was not directly related to housing but rather to reform Stormont so that no one party can collapse the government (94 per cent).
The benefits of citizens assemblies are two-fold in that they can deliver policy recommendations that have public buy-in and strengthen democracy through increased political participation; 54 per cent of participants in the Citizens’ Forum on Housing expressed that they now felt more inclined to engage in politics. A third of were non-voters.
Having experienced a citizens’ assembly firsthand, 91 per cent of the Citizens’ Forum on Housing endorsed the use of citizens’ assemblies by the Northern Ireland Assembly. Participatory democracy is about ensuring citizens are afforded the opportunity to be involved in decisions that impact their lives, it is not a threat to representative democracy but rather complements it.
Northern Ireland’s political parties already committed to the use of citizen assemblies in New Decade, New Approach, the 2020 deal brokered by the UK and Irish governments to restore Stormont, a commitment that the Assembly has yet to fulfil. The Citizens’ Forum on Housing provides a blueprint, and demonstrates not only that assemblies can be effective, but that there is public appetite, across communities, to be a part of them.
Read the full report here
