Direct rule has not been good for Northern Ireland, and its legacy is crumbling roads, 30-year-old trains and Victorian sewers, all part of a creaking infrastructure which is in dire need of investment, particularly in the west and north-west of the province, says Peter Robinson.
The Minister of Regional Development outlines the problems, the scale of which he says was not revealed to him in 23 years as a public representative. The province has been "falling behind" for decades. The only decent train service is that which serves Dublin, the roads are crumbling, the traffic, in Belfast particularly, is choking, and "there has to be massive investment in transportation", not just in rail but in buses. There are also parts of Belfast where he would not be surprised to hear that the sewage system had collapsed.
He argues that both in Britain and the Republic the amount of money available to deal with these problems is significantly more than he has.
He accepts that the Minister of Finance in the new Executive has a fixed budget as well, and indicates that, as in Castlereagh District Council where Mr Robinson is credited with taking a businesslike approach to the council's finances, a similar approach will be taken at the new department.
The new minister speaks of the need to question established business practices. At Castlereagh, he introduced competitive tendering "before Thatcher" and engaged in profitable commercial activities, such as the development of an ice-rink, which reduced rates.
"Asking why" is an approach which he intends to take to the Department of Regional Development. He wants to change not only the way the department does its business, but the business which it does.
He acknowledges that there are areas of social disadvantage in the Border counties and he has no difficulty working with local authorities on either side of the Border to improve the lot of these areas, which he says is only common sense.
Mr Robinson reserves his position on the development plan "Shaping Our Future", the development strategy of the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment, pending a report, following the plan's public consultation period, which is due next month.
However, he has already met lobby groups which have made submissions on the plan, including the Derry/Londonderry City Partnership - "as they call themselves" - and he is full of praise for the members' "considerable vision for themselves in terms of how they would like their area to develop".
They have made their determination, he adds, "in a way that crosses any political barriers". The partnership has expressed "a feeling that they haven't always been given their fair share of funding for infrastructure, which may have meant that they didn't mature as rapidly as other areas of the province".
But he adds that "they have presented plenty of evidence which would suggest that there is a need for infrastructural investment in the north-west and I know that there are arguments for other areas to the west of the province".
The delivery of such investment, he says, is more than he has within his gift. It is a responsibility to ensure equality in terms of distribution of resources.
"I can't determine that, because I know that Castlereagh is the nicest part of Northern Ireland, all the resources should go there. I have to ensure that the whole of the province is getting a fair deal," he says.
This is more important in the current administration than in any other, because "there are legal constraints on us to ensure that that balance does take place".
In relation to addressing social disadvantage on both sides of the Border, particularly the work of the cross-Border networks, he says there are "a whole raft of areas where having both co-ordination and co-operation just makes good sense".
He draws a distinction between the "political north-southery and the practical north-southery".
"I honestly don't think that I need a structure to be set up on an all-Ireland basis with an additional 100, 200 or 300 civil servants in order to ensure that we have some seamless connection on a road which is running from Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic. I think that there are equally satisfactory ways that we can have a necessary co-ordination and co-operation on those issues."