Debate contribution: Independent Environmental Protection Agency: Establishment

Debate contribution by Miss Michelle McIlveen on 10 November 2025.

MLA

Miss Michelle McIlveen

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

10 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Independent Environmental Protection Agency: Establishment

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5225264

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I have no doubt that the SDLP motion is well intentioned, but it ignores a fundamental reality. The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs finds itself incapable of properly funding the environmental structures that it already has. We are being asked, however, to fund yet another expensive quango. We already have the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) and the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), which exist to safeguard our natural environment, enforce regulations and hold Departments to account. Their collective failure to do so rests at the Minister's feet and that is his responsibility. We are not short on oversight, but we are short of results. There is a tendency in the Chamber to tag Lough Neagh into every motion on the environment, and we need some honesty on that issue. Creating another agency will not clean up Lough Neagh; it will not improve water quality. It will create another costly layer of bureaucracy — another structure with its own staff, offices, reports and headlines, but very little delivery on the ground. We do not need more committees, commissions or quangos; we need results. We need a system that actually works. Rather than token gestures or bureaucratic reshuffles, if the Minister truly wants to lead on the environment, he should start by fixing the system that he already controls. That means ensuring that the NIEA is properly resourced and empowered to act. It means cutting through departmental silos so that agriculture, infrastructure and environment policies work with rather than against each other. Importantly, it means holding senior officials and Ministers to account for delivery and for their failures. The SDLP motion speaks about governance and accountability, yet it proposes that we remove accountability from the Chamber, Ministers and elected representatives and hand it to an unelected quango.

No, I will not. That is not environmental leadership; rather, it is environmental abdication. The creation of another quango is a means by which the Minister avoids responsibility and accountability. It all becomes someone else's fault, and, as we have seen repeatedly, that becomes a safe space for an Alliance Minister. We have already heard the Minister complain that he is vilified for taking difficult decisions, and now he wants to create an agency to take those decisions for him. It is a convenient shield and a way to say, "It is not my fault; the agency decided". If we allow the Minister to hide behind a quango, what message does that send? It is that, when the going gets tough, we delegate. It is that Ministers can wash their hands of environmental enforcement and blame the quango instead. Accountability should remain with elected representatives and not be handed to an unaccountable board of appointees. We are meant to be living in a democracy. The independent review of environmental governance in Northern Ireland mentions accountability 34 times, but its recommendations only dilute that. I cannot think of a single occasion when adding another layer of bureaucracy solved a problem. We must also be wary of what happens when so-called independent bodies are created. They grow legs and arms. The Equality Commission's handling of the Ashers case should be a salutary warning. It was an independent body that was established to promote fairness and was never set up to police conscience or dictate belief, but its overreach cost the public dearly.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is an example of the overreach of unelected quangos. Recommendation 22 of the review states that the agency:

"should develop its own regulatory and enforcement strategy, independent from DAERA's."

In other words, it can decide what is a priority and what is not. Who, then, will direct environmental policy in Northern Ireland? Will it be the Minister or the quango? What we need is better delivery from the structures that we already have. If the Department and the NIEA were made to do their jobs properly, with clear lines of authority and proper resourcing, water quality in Lough Neagh could be improved, biodiversity protected and pollution tackled without creating another costly bureaucracy. That rests at the feet of the Minister. The motion is a recipe for more bureaucracy, less accountability and higher costs. It will do nothing to clean up Lough Neagh or improve air quality. It will, however, create jobs for bureaucrats and headaches for everyone else. An independent environment agency is not the panacea for the ills of Lough Neagh. We need accountability and coordination, not duplication and confusion. The buck stops with the Minister, and that is where it needs to stay.

759 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:45 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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