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Generating the NI Minutes of Proceedings

Generating the NI Minutes of Proceedings

The Minutes of Proceedings is generated once amendments have been assigned an outcome at the same time as preparing the Annotated Marshalled List.

How to generate a Minutes of Proceedings

Before you can generate the Minutes of Proceedings, you will need to record outcomes against all amendments in the Marshalled List (as part of preparing the Annotated Marshalled List).

Generate the Minutes of Proceedings

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  1. Once you have finished recording the outcomes on the Annotated Marshalled List, from the Amendment Manager, select Amendment Actions > Create Official List

  2. Select Minutes of Proceedings

  3. Update the relevant information in the dialog box and click on Create

  4. The Minutes of Proceedings will appear in a new tab in the Editor, containing relevant outcome statements for all amendments that had an outcome for the particular bill version.

Further information

  • Amendments will appear in the Minutes of Proceedings if they had been assigned an outcome for the selected stage and bill version.

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  • You can insert additional paragraphs or edit the existing outcome statements if needed.

  • Displaying Members' names in the preface of the list:

    • If the Member has a ministerial role, display this first before their name e.g. "the Minister of Justice, Mrs Naomi Long"

    • If the Member is a chairperson, display this before their name e.g. "Chairperson of the Committee for Justice, Mr Paul Givan"

    • If the Member had more than one chairperson role, only display one (you can overwrite it if it is incorrect)

    • If the Member has both a chair role and ministerial role, display the ministerial role.

    • If the Member isn't a chair person or minister, display their name e.g. "Mr Jim Allister". 

List generation logic

  • If the amendment is amending another amendment (a2a), the corresponding statement will be inserted before the target amendment’s statement

  • If an a2a is Made or Made on division, the target amendment will include the words “as amended”

Additional list generation logic for Consideration Stage:

  • All clauses and schedules will have a ‘stand part’ statement (if there wasn’t already a stand part motion in the list of amendments)

  • If a non-new Clause/Schedule amendment was made/made on division, the stand part statement for that clause/schedule will include the words “as amended”

Known/agreed limitations

  1. The amendment count is in words rather than numbers e.g. seventeen rather than 17

  2. Statements do not contain any formatting and should be applied after the list has generated in the Editor e.g.

    1. bold for the outcome

    2. italics for not moved/not called, and

    3. italics for “as an Amendment to Amendment X”

  3. Lawmaker will not process statements for the following rare occurring amendments (and in all cases, these can be manually inserted into the list if required)—

    1. Amendments using the phrase “At the appropriate place, insert the following new clause—”

    2. Amendments that substitute whole clauses or schedules e.g. “leave out clause x and insert—”

    3. Amendments missing an amendment number (ignoring stand part motions)

  4. The bill number follows the same format as amendment lists i.e. Bill X and not “NIA Bill X”