What happened to Northern Ireland

It has become to increasingly grate on me the way that the athletes representing this country at the London Olympics are called Team GB. The team's website is even called TeamGB.

There's just one problem: the British Olympic Association (BOA) is the National Olympic Committee for Great Britain and Northern Ireland (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) as well as various Crown Dependencies (the Isle of Man and the Channel Island Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey) and those UK Overseas Territories which do not have their own National Olympic Committees (Anguilla; the British Antarctic Territory; the British Indian Ocean Territory; the Falkland Islands; Gibraltar; Montserrat; the Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands; Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha; South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia; and the Turks and Caicos Islands). Now not all of these Dependencies and Overseas Territories should get a name-check, very few will provide an athlete for the team anyway. But I remember when I was a lad that the team represented Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that Mary Peters, amongst others from Northern Irealnd, has represented this country with distinction and glory.

So why has Northern Ireland been dropped from the name of the Great Britain team and when? Do I detect the influence of the last Labour government?