Stormont confirms it has failed to think about how major administrative hurdles harm the right to protest
22nd January 2026
Stormont confirms it has failed to think about how major administrative hurdles harm the right to protest
This week, the Northern Ireland Executive Office and the Minister for Communities confirmed what RSI has suspected: the NI executive has failed to consider the negative impacts that administrative hurdles have on peaceful protesters in Northern Ireland, while it leaves local authorities empowered to make arbitrary decisions?.
In response to a question tabled by Gerry Carroll MLA, the NI Executive Office said:
‘The Executive Office has not carried out any assessment on whether the requirement to notify the police before a protest has deterred people from organising protests.’
In response to another question Carroll asked, the Minister for Communities explained that he did not provide any guidance for local authorities regarding public liability insurance requirements for protesters. As RSI documented last year, local authorities in Northern Ireland regularly require peaceful protest organisers to show that they have astronomical amounts of insurance coverage — as much as £5 million or £10 million. This requirement prevents many from exercising their human right to protest.
Our November 2025 report Twenty-eight days and £10 million: Rights-violating restrictions on protests in Northern Ireland documented these and other administrative hurdles, concluding that the UK government and local authorities in Northern Ireland are violating human rights by erecting such barriers against people looking to express themselves and wrongly treating every protest as if it were a sectarian parade.
For more information, see the full responses below.