Farmers Checkmate Greens
Having been outmanoeuvred on the chess board by 8 year old Raghav Gupta at last Friday's Stormont Elite Chess tournament, our Green MLA Brian Wilson found himself checkmated by the Environment Minister Arlene Foster this morning when she ruled out the creation of an Independent Environmental Protection Agency.
Instead she is revamping her in house Environment and Heritage Service, which will become the NI Environment Agency from July. It will be renamed but not independent. The decision overturned the recommendations of a review commissioned under direct rule. It left the Ulster Farmers Union happy, but green campaigners fuming.
The DUP's own one man green wing, Jim Wells, asked for a re-assurance that the minister was not ruling out an Independent EPA for ever and a day. She paid tribute to his green credentials and assured him that the case for an independent agency could be examined again in the context of an overall review in 2011.
Of course that's the year the next Assembly election is due, after which who knows which party will take the Environment portfolio. Unless Jim has more success in converting his party colleagues to his green cause than he's had so far, it's hard to imagine a DUP Environment Minister revisiting this one.
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