T1. Mr O'Toole asked the First Minister and deputy First Minister, in light of the fact that a Lough Neagh action plan was published some weeks ago, albeit with mostly non-binding actions, to state whether, when finalised, the Programme for Government will commit to the creation of an independent environmental protection agency, especially because, although the draft Programme for Government talks about targets, for the life of him he cannot find many binding targets or clear commitments therein. (AQT 481/22-27)

I thank the Member for his question. The draft Programme for Government contains nine areas of priority, which outline a number of key actions. It also outlines areas on which, although there is not yet Executive agreement, we propose to bring forward actions. It is important to emphasise that the issues that have not yet been agreed by the Executive will still need to come to the Executive for agreement. There are references to each of the priorities. That is what is out for consultation. Once those are agreed, and once prioritisation is agreed, we will set out how we hope to achieve significant year-on-year progress against those nine priority areas. That will follow the consultation and expand on some of the detail in the draft document at the moment.

We are now getting to the heart of it: clearly, in certain specific and very important areas, there is not Executive agreement. That is fine, but it has taken us a few hours to get to that point.

Something that is not mentioned at all in the draft Programme for Government is the language commissioner and the associated strategy and work. After consultation, and if the Irish language bodies and other interested parties give very strong representations that they would like to see that included, will it be included in an updated Programme for Government?

It feels a little bit like Groundhog Day, only without any of the fun or entertainment; just relentless negativity. You can have opposition for opposition's sake, or you can have opposition that is constructive. I have looked at the document that he has produced; there is, indisputably, significantly more detail in the document that we have produced.

We are asking for people's views on our nine key priorities. The Member said just a few days ago that a good Programme for Government should have a small number of priority areas. We have set out very clearly that the Programme for Government will not reference absolutely everything that the Executive and Departments are going to do. We have already made it clear that we have agreed the process in relation to the issue that he referenced. We are waiting for a further submission to be made on the detail of the appointment processes, but that is now in legislation. The commitment is there, and we have spoken about it to the House. There will be many hundreds of other areas and issues that will be dealt with in Departments, or cross-departmentally, or which will be brought to the Executive over the course of the next three years. The Executive's Programme for Government focuses, as he recommended, on a small number of key priorities, which will be measured and will have an attached budget.