I thought that I detected mutterings from the Opposition Front Bench. My apologies to those hon. Gentlemen if I was mistaken.

Is it in the power of this Minister-designate to cancel the housing debt? Otherwise, it is talking in the air to talk of 20,000 houses when we cannot get another penny from the banks. Or is it thought possible to shore something up just to get it off the ground, so that then the purse-strings will be loosened and the money will flow and carry the thing for a year or two until it works? Will we get not just fly-by-night industry but fly-by-night injections of money to get the system working only for a year or two?

Or can we be shown some evidence of long-term progress, like cancellation of the outstanding debt, easier availability of land to the Housing Executive, the end of land speculation, even the temporary nationalisation of the building industry in Northern Ireland, to prevent the gross profit-making that is done out of the housing shortage by some building firms. Will the new Minister be able to do that?

We have heard that there is no difference on the social and economic programme devised by the three parties to the new Executive. Could we, now, next year or possibly in the next decade, hear the social and economic programme? We have heard that agreement was reached on the first day. Could we see it? We have had White Papers on the amount of money available—constant White Papers on this and that, committees here and there.

Could we please know what social and economic future has been planned for the people of Northern Ireland? It is a great deal more relevant to the man in the street to know what is in store for him in terms of his social and economic future than whether or not the United Nations will ever have to referee this situation. Can we have something like that?

And can we be told that internment will end? I sit in my home at night and switch on the late night news on BBC 1 to see that the internees are being released two at a time: "The Commission sat today, released two, reinterned two, adjourned two." It is getting like the First Division football results. Is this the planned release of internees before Christmas which was promised, or are they once again being used as political hostages—"If you are good, they might get out and if you are not good, they will not get out"? There are far too many "mights" and "may-be's". Far too many compromises are being made to achieve nothing.

I can see, and I do not see why I should be criticised for being able to see, what it is that angers and frustrates the working-class Protestant. I could see what angered and frustrated him right from the beginning, when certain hon. Gentlemen could not, but I would not say that those whom I represent are so narrow-minded or bigoted that the very fact that the Protestants are upset, annoyed and frustrated should be for them a reason for rejoicing. That is not the kind of people I represent. They take no joy in the anger and frustration of the Protestant working class. They do not think that, just because Faulkner has no support from the Protestants, support from the Catholics should be substituted. I know, as Mr. Faulkner has said, that a win is a win is a win. But a rogue is a rogue is a rogue.

So it is feasible that while the Protestant middle class, being less the victims of their own history, are prepared to share with the Catholic middle class in order to safeguard and protect the system from annihilation, and because the Catholic middle class always and ever had only one quarrel with the system—that they did not have a share in making it work—let no one be mistaken that the Catholic working class are happy. Their menfolk are still interned; they are still paying out arrears though people told them that it would never happen; there is still a housing shortage. Things have not changed for them.

Perhaps they feel that they are working towards a united Ireland and may be that makes their national pride feel a bit better. Maybe they think that some day it will be better because we are heading—as we are, like it or not—towards some kind of united Ireland. But for today and tomorrow and the day after life is very much the same on the Falls Road and the Shankill. There are too many people on the dole, too many on the housing list.

It is not enough to say, as I have heard certain hon. Members and the SDLP say, that some people should not be in Long Kesh, some people should not be interned. Let me make my position clear: nobody should be interned without trial; just nobody. Till internment is ended the Executive will have difficulty selling the deal. There will be no end to the resistance of the Catholic community till Long Kesh is closed and the lights put out for ever.