The justice department is regarded as a particularly sensitive portfolio within the Northern Ireland executive, with a wide-ranging remit that includes policing legislation, the courts service and prisons.
It is a role that is inevitably bound up in our troubled past but it also needs to be looking at the present and future, bringing forward measures that are relevant to the world we live in now.
Naomi Long, in an interview with the Irish News, has set out her priorities in office and it is unsurprising that she is determined to challenge the continuing malign role of paramilitarism in our society.
It is not just the existence of these groups and the pernicious influence they have on certain districts, but also the perceptions that can arise around those who set themselves up as 'gatekeepers' within a community.
Ms Long acknowledges that when statutory agencies engage with these individuals it gives them status which is unhelpful in breaking down the 'coercive control' they have over communities, and it also sends out a negative message to those who would be prepared to help the police but fear that a 'cosy relationship' may exist.
The minister wants to see government agencies engaging with communities in a way that 'bypasses the gatekeepers'.
''Not to exclude them from having a say, but exclude them from controlling who else has a say,'' she said.
There are legitimate concerns over the often elevated status that some have in our society, despite having no mandate other than links to paramilitary organisations.
It has to be recognised that a number of former paramilitaries have played a positive role in the transition from conflict to peace but it is almost 22 years since the Good Friday Agreement and we should now be at the point where illegal groups, both loyalist and republican, have left the stage entirely.
Unfortunately, there are individuals and organisations that are reluctant to cede the power they have built up, and we know there are those who are clearly still involved in criminality including extortion and drug dealing.
Ms Long wants to see the anti-paramilitary strategy 'reinvigorated', saying it has lacked leadership.
We certainly need a clarity of approach to paramilitaries and an end to the 'disproportionate control' highlighted by the justice minister.
