Sinn Féin have made sweeping changes to their executive team at Stormont following the recent assembly election.
The party has decided to keep the education and agriculture briefs at Stormont and plumped also for culture and arts.
On Monday of this week the party named its new ministers with John O'Dowd taking on education, Michelle O'Neill agriculture, and Caral Ni Chuilin culture and arts.
The DUP kept the same four ministers they had before the May 5 poll with Sammy Wilson and Arlene Foster keeping finance and enterprise respectively.
However, Edwin Poots has taken on the hot potato that is health while Nelson McCausland is social development minister.
Alex Attwood of the SDLP is the new environment minister. Ulster Unionist Danny Kennedy will be minister for regional development; Stephen Farry, Alliance Party, is the new minister for employment and learning and his party leader, David Ford, remains as justice minister.
Jonathon Bell, DUP, and Martina Anderson, Sinn Féin, are the two new junior ministers at the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.
Many observers were surprised that Sinn Féin took education again as their first choice. It had been expected that the party would have opted for enterprise, so leaving the DUP with the choice to take education. One of the unresolved issues from the last assembly was the thorny one of academic streaming at age eleven.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said his Sinn Fein colleague John O'Dowd, the new education minister, would "look at all issues, meet all stakeholders, and decide what is the best way forward."
However, he added that education "is going to undergo much needed change in the coming period."
The SDLP's Alex Attwood said he was delighted to accept the environment portfolio.
"Local government, planning, the environment and road safety afford real opportunities to make Northern Ireland a better place to live, work and invest," he said.
Ulster Unionist Danny Kennedy said he was "honored and humbled" at his appointment as regional development minister.
"I will urgently review policy set by the previous Sinn Féin minister, who planned to introduce new car-parking charges for towns and villages throughout Northern Ireland," he said.
