Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): I welcome Louise Warde Hunter, grade 3 deputy secretary; Colette McMaster, grade 5 assistant secretary; and Astrid Stuart, grade 7 principal officer. I ask you to take up to 10 minutes for your presentation, after which we will ask some questions.

Ms Louise Warde Hunter (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): Thank you very much, Chairman, to you and the Committee members for the chance to provide a briefing on the response to the public consultation on the policy proposals for rural proofing. You introduced Colette and Astrid, who hope to flesh out answers to any questions that Committee members might have and provide detail on issues you would like to explore with us.

Going back to the beginning, members are aware of the Minister's intention, subject to Executive approval, to progress a rural proofing Bill through its Assembly stages during this mandate. When we came before you earlier in the year, on 20 January, I outlined the need for the proposed Bill, the discussions that we had had up until that point with stakeholders and the Bill's policy proposals. I also referred to the intended public consultation exercise on those draft policy proposals. The Department wrote subsequently to the Committee to confirm that the consultation would take place during a six-week period from 3 February to 13 March.

The purpose of our presentation today is to update the Committee on that response to the consultation. Committee members will have received a copy of the summary of responses to the consultation, which gives an overview of the exercise, the views expressed at public meetings and the written responses received. We intend for that report, combined with DARD's response to those consultation responses, to be published in the coming weeks.

We had nine public meetings facilitated by departmental officials, representatives of the Rural Community Network (RCN) and the Rural Development Council (RDC). The meetings were held during the consultation period, and we are grateful to those two organisations for their support. Meetings took place in Banbridge, Garvagh, Cookstown, Antrim, Enniskillen, Markethill, Belfast, Omagh and Dungiven. A number of factors were considered in determining the locations, including trying to get geographical spread, which I mentioned last time I was in front of the Committee, rural location and venue availability. Public meetings, as I said, were held from 19 February to 6 March. They were a mixture of morning, afternoon and evening events that were publicised in the press and on the Department's website. The meetings were also promoted in tweets from the Executive and a number of stakeholder organisations. A total of 47 people attended the meetings and gave their views on the policy proposals for the Bill.

In addition, the Department received 32 written responses to the consultation. The respondents included a range of rural community stakeholders, such as the RCN, the RDC, the Rural Housing Association (RHA), The Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network (RWN), the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU), the Northern Ireland Local Government Association (NILGA), a number of district councils and several non-departmental public bodies, including the Northern Ireland Housing Executive and Libraries NI. A list of all the respondents is included in the summary of responses provided to Committee members.

To come to the substance of the consultation responses, the majority of respondents supported the need for change and the proposal to put rural proofing on a statutory footing. No respondents opposed this proposed enhancement of the rural proofing process, although one respondent's view was that the case for change had not been adequately made. Most respondents felt that placing a statutory duty to rural proof on all Departments and local councils would help ensure that policymakers considered the needs of rural dwellers. They also felt that a statutory duty would help ensure a consistent approach to the rural proofing process.

To give a little of the flavour, only two of the 32 respondents considered that the proposed statutory duty would be ineffective. One of them suggested that a duty to consider the needs of rural dwellers without having to mitigate the policy being developed or reviewed would not ensure the robust application of rural proofing. The other considered that the proposed statutory duty should not be introduced prior to undertaking a process of education about and encouragement to undertake rural proofing.

The majority of respondents also felt that the statutory duty to rural proof should be extended to non-departmental public bodies, although views differed on the particular NDPBs to which the duty should extend. There was strong support for DARD having a statutory role to promote and encourage rural proofing, with some respondents suggesting what such a role should involve. It was thought that this role for DARD would be a further measure to help ensure a more consistent approach to the rural proofing process. No respondents disagreed with this proposed statutory duty for DARD, although a couple indicated that they were unsure about it. One of those respondents, while recognising the need for a lead coordinating body to promote and encourage other bodies to undertake rural proofing, did not believe that the role should necessarily be fulfilled by DARD. The other respondent questioned whether there might be an alternative means of promoting and encouraging rural proofing.

Most respondents felt that placing a statutory duty on DARD to produce and publish regular reports on rural proofing, to be laid before the Assembly, would help improve the availability and transparency of information. A small number of those did not support the proposals for monitoring and reporting, three of whom felt that there was a need for independence in the arrangements. The other did not agree with the proposal to lay monitoring reports before the Assembly. However, as I said, most respondents felt that doing so was a good idea.

The proposal to increase cooperation and collaboration between DARD and other Departments and public bodies was supported by each of the respondents that addressed this aspect of the consultation. Many felt that greater coordination and collaboration was vital to ensure meaningful and effective rural proofing to achieve proper outcomes for rural dwellers. There was widespread agreement among respondents to the proposal to strengthen DARD's role in providing support for rural proofing. It was felt that support through the provision of training, advice and guidance was a further key factor in ensuring effective rural proofing. No respondents disagreed with this proposed strengthening of DARD's role. A more detailed analysis of the comments and views expressed in response to the consultation, both by those who attended the meetings and those who wrote to us, is included in the summary of responses provided to members. As I mentioned earlier, it is intended that that analysis, along with DARD's response to the consultation, will be finalised and published over coming weeks.

Following DARD's consideration of the responses to the consultation, there are no proposed changes to the policy proposals for the Bill. It is therefore proposed that, subject to Executive agreement, the Bill should provide for six key areas, which are: first, a statutory duty on Departments and district councils to consider the needs of people living in rural areas when developing new policy, strategy and plans or revising existing ones and when designing and delivering public services or making changes to the way in which they are delivered; secondly, a statutory role for DARD to promote and encourage Departments and district councils to consider the needs of people living in rural areas; thirdly, a requirement for DARD to produce regular monitoring reports to be laid before the Assembly; fourthly, provision for Departments and district councils to make arrangements for cooperation and collaboration to ensure a more consistent and cohesive approach to addressing the needs of rural dwellers; fifthly, power for DARD to support rural proofing and the implementation of the Bill through the provision of training, advice and guidance; and, finally, an option to extend the provisions of the Bill to NDPBs. In advance of securing Executive agreement, the Department has been liaising with the Office of the Legislative Counsel, the Department Solicitor's Office and the legislative programme secretariat on preparing a draft Bill for the Executive's approval prior to its introduction to the Assembly before the summer recess.

Mr Chairman, that is a whistle-stop tour through the overarching feedback from the public consultation process. We respect fully that the Committee will have a key role in scrutinising the proposed Bill and its draft provisions, and we very much look forward to working with the Committee as it undertakes that role during the Bill's passage. I hope that that is effective enough in concluding the opening remarks for Committee members. We are now very happy to take questions on the substance in any detail.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Thank you very much for your presentation. It was initially anticipated that the results of the consultation and the draft proposals in the Bill would go to the Executive for approval on 14 May. That would have allowed time for the Bill to be introduced to the Assembly before the summer recess. I understand that the Executive did not approve the Bill on 14 May. How does that affect your timescale?

Ms Warde Hunter: I have my schedule in front of me, but I know that Astrid will have that detail imprinted on her mind. We have a couple of other Executive meetings before the summer recess, and so we are very hopeful that it will go to the next one. Astrid might be able to comment more fully.

Ms Astrid Stuart (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): As Louise said, there are two more Executive meetings that would allow for Executive approval of the introduction of a Bill before summer recess. The final date for securing Executive agreement is the meeting on 11 June. That is the deadline for the introduction of the Bill. In the meantime, as Louise said, we continue to work with the Office of the Legislative Counsel on the drafting of the Bill. We hope to secure Executive agreement at that stage.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): You have a few weeks; 11 June is not far away.

Ms Warde Hunter: We appreciate, Mr Chairman, that time is reasonably tight, but, yes, we have time.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): It is proposed that the Bill will extend to local government, yet the response rate from local government to the consultation was very low. What does that low response rate mean in regard to being sure of the opinion and feelings of local government? It is strange that its response was so low.

Ms Warde Hunter: We also invited responses in the stakeholder forum that we had. We had representation on that. Astrid will keep me right as to the precise format of that representation. We certainly cast our net more widely, and, in getting out and about across Northern Ireland, we were keen to ensure that respondents were given every opportunity. I did not read anything untoward into the fact that there was a low response. The critical thing for us was that the majority of those who responded were favourably disposed towards what we were proposing. That was the key thing for us. Colette might like to add to that.

Mrs Colette McMaster (Department of Agriculture and Rural Development): The responses that we got included those from five of the councils and from NILGA. Of the councils that responded, most supported the extension to local government. I think that there was only one that said no to that; three said yes, and one did not comment on that particular recommendation. In the meetings or in any other discussions that we have had with the stakeholder representatives, no great concern was raised. When talking to any of the council representatives or NILGA, we heard a desire to see this fitting in well with community planning, rather than being an additional requirement on top of or separate to it. The desire was to see it being part of the holistic community planning approach. It could fit quite well in there.

Mr Byrne: Sorry for being out of the room at the start. I have a general question first. You had only 32 written responses, and quite a small number of people turned up at the public meetings — is that right?

Ms Warde Hunter: Yes, 47 attended the public meetings.

Mr Byrne: So, 47 in total attended the nine meetings.

Ms Warde Hunter: Yes.

Mr Byrne: That is disappointing. I am worried that all the energy is going out of the rural proofing Bill before it has started.

Ms Warde Hunter: We had an intensive public consultation. We got a very good response by way of substantive written responses, and, while we clearly would love to have seen more people attend those public meetings, we appreciate that time is precious. The issue is whether we got a good overall balance in our responses. What was important for me in shaping the consultation was that we were keen to afford every opportunity to consultees and to go out to all the counties across Northern Ireland to ensure that we gave people ample opportunity. One cannot legislate for who wants to come along to the meeting; that is why the written responses are forming the substantive bulk of the responses.

Mr Byrne: I appreciate the predicament that you are in, Louise.

In the statutory duty that people want DARD to take the lead on, what will the relationship be with the local action groups (LAGs) or the local area partnerships, given that we are devolving more functions to these new amorphous bodies, these new councils?

Ms Warde Hunter: Sorry, in what respect? Can you expand on that?

Mr Byrne: Is it envisaged that there will be a close relationship between DARD, as the body with the statutory duty to drive rural proofing, and the new councils?

Ms Warde Hunter: Placing that duty on the Department is all about having it encourage, facilitate and promote rural proofing. Naturally, it would engage closely with councils and all related bodies, but that is very much from the point of view of it trying to be the rising tide that lifts all boats. I think that DARD would want to exercise a real commitment in relation to that.

Do I detect in your question an issue around the set of relationships ?

Mr Byrne: Yes; Colette made reference to widespread agreement, training, advice and guidance, and then there was the question of whether NDPBs would have a role. The other story is, where is the resource? At the end of the day, this thing will only work if there is allocated resource, ie, money. Are we willing, therefore, to have the rural development programme (RDP) agreed, or is there a complete separation between the rural development programme and what we are trying to drive through in a rural proofing Bill?

Ms Warde Hunter: Colette, would you like to draw out the connection with the RDP?

I think this is about how we do business. If you are looking at the duty that would be on DARD, then, clearly, it would have to prioritise resources to undertake all of those functions. There would have to be an allocation of human resource and, potentially, of financial resource towards that to make that happen. That is simply an extension, I would argue, of what DARD has been doing anyway.

Perhaps Colette can draw out the point about RDP.

Mrs McMaster: The LAGs will have a role in delivering the proposed RDP. The LAGs will produce their local development strategies, and that is what they will be proposing to deliver under the RDP. Those local development strategies will, it is proposed, be part of the council's community plan then. There will be that link through the RDP, I suppose, to the community plan.

If we are proposing to extend the rural proofing duty to councils, the duty will be on the councils themselves. We are proposing that the councils will take account of rural needs as they are determining their community plans, as they are reviewing those plans and as they are deciding where they will allocate resources in that community plan. I suppose that the duty will be on councils, and it will be for councils to ensure what elements of their community plan are taking account of the requirement.

On the burden on councils, as I have said, we are proposing that structures will exist within the structures that they are putting in place for community plans. We will be working with DOE, and we have been talking to it already. I know that things are still at a fairly early stage of planning, but we are hoping that the structures for rural proofing are very much a part of what is being developed for community planning as opposed to being an add-on burden for councils.

Mr Byrne: Alas, Chairman, I am a bit confused. Are we going to ignore the issue of resources, ie, money, and, as a result, have a less than effective outcome in terms of DARD's statutory duty and the role of the district councils or these new cantons in relation to local development?

Mrs McMaster: The intention is that rural proofing should help to make better decisions about how resources are allocated, and I think that, recognising the current climate, there are and will continue to be constraints on resources. Looking at the rural needs of communities before those decisions are made and considering how those needs would be affected by decisions is to ensure that the best decisions are made about the allocation of the resources that are there.

Mr Buchanan: Again, I raise the concern about the low turnout at the meetings. We may have carried out a consultation and made every effort to do that. There were nine meetings, and they were very poorly attended. Is it the case that we are really missing the voice of the rural people in this exercise that was carried out? Why were the people in the community groups out in the rural areas not notified about the public meetings? Were they not intended to be at these public meetings? Were the meetings really only for the likes of councils, LAGs, community networks and all that type of stuff? Was the voice of the rural people in the communities not important or not required at these nine public meetings that were held? I know from the meeting in Omagh, which I dropped into, that the only people who were there were from community networks and maybe from LAGs. Really, they were from the umbrella body that is delivering. There were not that many people at the meeting, and, when I came out of it, one or two people said to me, "We have not really got the right people here because we have not got the voice of the community in the meeting". That is simply because it appears that they were not invited to it.

Ms Warde Hunter: I will initially respond to that. The voice of rural dwellers was absolutely what we were after, whether that was as private citizens or through organised groups.

Mr Buchanan: Why were they not invited to the meetings?

Ms Warde Hunter: Information about the meetings was published on the website. It was put out in a press release and was advertised in the 'Belfast Telegraph', 'The Irish News' and the 'News Letter'. It was tweeted from the Executive's Twitter account, and several stakeholder organisations also put out information about the meetings on their websites. I argue that we used all the regular channels to reach out to private citizens through public adverts and adverts on umbrella body websites, along with those who were kind enough to tweet about it. I am not sure how else you can reach private citizens. We took a multimedia approach.

Mr Buchanan: I see where the problem is. I am speaking for only west Tyrone. Look at Omagh and the number of community groups that are dealt with through Omagh District Council — it is Fermanagh and Omagh council now, but, at that time, it was Omagh council. Look at the number of community groups that are dealt with through Omagh community network and different ones like that. If I were to go and talk to those community groups, I would find that not one of those community groups knew about the meeting. I am involved in one or two community groups; they did not know about it. I knew about it through the channels from here, but the community groups were not made aware of it. When we came out of the meeting, one of the people said to me, "We haven't got the right people here because they don't know about it".

Ms Warde Hunter: Maybe Astrid wants to outline who we wrote to, in addition to the advertising process, to try to reach out. It was not all left to the idea of tweets and putting things on websites and in press releases. Maybe you might run through the other people we wrote to.

Ms Stuart: In terms of whom we wrote to regarding the consultation documents and the meetings, we drew the list from the Department's section 75 consultee list, those listed in OFMDFM's guidance on the distribution of departmental publications and consultation documents, and the members of our rural-proofing stakeholder forum. I know, from talking to members of the stakeholder forum, that they, in turn, further sent out to their email contact list as well. That is who the consultation was issued to.

Additionally, it is worth pointing out that it was issued as well to all Departments and local councils; the 26 pre-April 2015 councils and the 11 post-April 2015 councils. That gives you a flavour of who we wrote to.

Mr Buchanan: It appears somewhat unfortunate that the information was not passed on to the local community groups on the ground. Take, for example, Omagh community network, which puts out a magazine every month that contains all the details of all the things that are happening and all the meetings coming up. It did not appear in that. There has been a difficulty. I contend that that is why you had a very small turnout at all the public meetings; the people in the real rural areas and in the community groups did not know about them. If they did not know about it in Omagh, I am sure that there were other areas that did not know about it. However, that has come and gone; that is my gripe about it.

Are you satisfied now that you have captured the voice of the rural community in this process?

Ms Warde Hunter: We certainly have a very important cross section. I point to the number of written responses that we received, some of which were very substantive. They included not just sectoral interests but broad community network organisations that reflect the views of their membership. The list of respondents is in your papers.

The range, quality and diversity of the responses we received have given us a good bit of feedback. I agree with you that it is disappointing, especially when you are running a number of meetings, not to have a better turnout, not least because we, as officials, were delighted to explain. We wanted more engagement. You get a rich conversation. That said, we got a rich conversation with smaller groups as well. In the final analysis, the issue is whether we got a balance between the forms of consultation that we sought to do. I would like to have seen more, but we certainly got the written responses, which has given us a good range to go on. It has certainly given confidence to the proposals.

Mr Anderson: Thank you, ladies, for your presentation today. On the back of what my colleague said, how many of the district councils responded?

Ms Warde Hunter: Five.

Mr Anderson: Was that five out of the original 26 in the old council set-up?

Ms Warde Hunter: We wrote to both. We wrote out under the —

Mr Anderson: I see here that you wrote to Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, so obviously that is a new one.

Ms Warde Hunter: Yes, so it was about the timing.

Mr Anderson: Astrid, I would have thought that, if you had communicated through those councils, it would be disappointing if the word did not get out, especially to those rural community groups — I deal with a lot of them — that those nine public meetings were taking place. When you see that there were 47 attendees at those public meetings right across Northern Ireland, that is a poor show. It makes me apprehensive in the sense that we are trying to bring something through here and we are trying to get something completed in this mandate. The Chair mentioned that it did not get to the Executive in the last meeting in May. Are we rushing something through here, as Tom Buchanan said, without getting the voice of the rural people and hearing about their needs? As public representatives, we know a lot of the issues, but there is so much out there. I would be concerned that we have not really touched base with a lot of those people. We need to get those views. Do you agree that it would not be a good idea to rush something through if we have not got the views that we want?

Ms Warde Hunter: It goes to the heart of my earlier response to Mr Buchanan, which is that you can offer the meetings and you can try to reach out in a variety of ways, as we did through network organisations, by writing directly to councils, reaching out to NDPBs and putting out public advertisements. Clearly, it may have been of lesser interest than some of the meetings that DARD has had on other big subjects when we take issues out to the farming community and say that we are doing specialist seminars or engagements on the single farm payment, or something like that, where there is standing room only. I would certainly have liked to see that, but I appreciate that, for some people, perhaps developing policies to improve the well-being of rural dwellers might have seemed to be a wee bit conceptual. I go back to my original answer, which is that we got a good spread, particularly in the range and quality of the written responses. That is a very sensible and reasonable basis on which to draw evidence. The responses were substantive in many cases.

Mr Anderson: Louise, at one meeting, there was one attendee, and there were two at another, while another two meetings had four attendees each. Quite honestly, any of us could get those numbers if we all brought a neighbour. It is really sad that that is all we got. Something has gone wrong here if those are the numbers that came out to those meetings. It concerns me that the views of the people are not known. We do not know what their views are because they were not at those meetings. When I go round my constituency, I hear a lot about the rural areas. I hear it each and every day, like all of us who are sitting here. How are you to get those views from numbers like that?

Colette, I think it was you who talked about working with the new councils and how to rural-proof community plans and rural needs. How much work has been done with the councils thus far? If we cannot get the councils to communicate, or if they did not communicate with the community groups to come to meetings, it is a problem. How much work is being done to get down to the grass roots?

Ms Warde Hunter: I certainly believe that we pursued that very energetically through the network that we had. I take you back to the stakeholder forum that we used, which was a cross section to guide and advise the Department on this and was content with the range of what we were trying to do and with the lists of people and organisations that we worked with and reached out to. I acknowledge that we would have welcomed more people to enrich the debate, but I do not think that you can see the public meetings as the only things that we did. Had they been, you would be right to say that that number is not representative. However, we had 32 written responses to come back on.

Mr Anderson: Louise, there was recently a big issue in my constituency about nursery provision. Just through social media, within days, we were able to have a public meeting that some 60 or 70 attended. Something has gone wrong here for us not to get those numbers out. We will leave that because it has been well talked about today.

How do we get the new councils on board to ensure that they get views on what rural dwellers need? I have said before that, for years, rural dwellers have been the forgotten people. I am a rural dweller who has served on councils. How do we get the new councils to work to ensure that those needs are met under the rural proofing Bill?

Ms Warde Hunter: I will pass you to Colette on that, but we all agree that the community planning process is the critical way in which every council is duty-bound to develop its plan to address the needs of people living within its boundaries against the range of policies and, critically, services that it delivers. Our relationship with councils is about ensuring that they take on board the rural dimension in exercising their duties and developing their community plans.

Mr Anderson: Joe Byrne made the point that resourcing is a problem. We need to get away from talking a good story and identify what the rural community needs and is lacking. That has all gone on in the past. We need to get to the stage where these issues are addressed. Where will the resources to get this sorted come from?

Ms Warde Hunter: That takes us back slightly to the conversation that we had at the last Committee meeting. Clearly, whether a Department or a council, the development of its own policy and strategy, and putting at its heart how that impacts on rural dwellers, is what we are driving here by increasing awareness of the need to consider them. That is why the Bill has been brought forward.

Colette, did you want to say something specifically about councils in response to Mr Anderson?

Mrs McMaster: Working with others and helping them to deliver on their duty is a key part of the Bill. As well as extending a statutory duty to all Departments and district councils, DARD will have a statutory role to promote and encourage Departments and councils to consider the needs of people living in rural areas. DARD will have the power to provide training, advice and guidance, and to make arrangements for cooperation and collaboration to help ensure a consistent approach. Those duties fall to DARD, so we will have an important role, subject to the Bill being enacted, in making sure that this all happens as effectively as we can make it. It is part of an ongoing relationship that we will have with other Departments, councils and so on.

We see that evolving as this whole process of community planning embeds, and I know that councils are in the early stages of that. However, it is quite timely that the Bill is being introduced at this early point, so that the rural proofing duty will be there fairly early in the whole set-up of the new councils so that we can work with them. We have started to make those communication links with councils. NILGA is represented on our stakeholder forum, and we will continue that as we work through this process.

The 32 responses that we got were more from the stakeholder organisations. The responses were broadly supportive across the piece. It is not that a lot of people saw difficulties with the proposals, so I think that is important.

Mr Anderson: You said that you are working with NILGA.

Mrs McMaster: Yes, NILGA is represented.

Mr Anderson: Will you be working with the individual councils as well?

Mrs McMaster: We want to work with them to find out the best way to do this. I know that we are at the early stages, but we want to find out the best way for them to work with us. We have not yet set this in stone; these are the proposals that we are putting forward for the Bill at this stage. As the Bill moves through its process, that is work that we will have to do.

Mr McMullan: At present, the councils are doing community plans. At one meeting that I attended with them, quite a lot of the time was spent dealing with rural proofing etc. I believe that the public are more educated about rural proofing that we give them credit for. That is maybe part of the reason why such meetings are not greatly attended, as I know. They weigh heavily on community groups — community networks and people like that — to deal with those issues for them. We had agriculture meetings that were attended by 300, 400, 500, and 600 people, and rural proofing was one of the things that came up a lot. The public are more educated in rural proofing than what we are taking from this report, and that is not in any way meant to demean your report.

As we move on with the rural proofing issue, you will see more and more coming out, because I think that some councils have not even started their community plans. Some are maybe well into them and some are just starting. For one meeting I was at, we rang up and got council officials to sit down with us, and we spent nearly an hour and a half with them. I know of six other groups that connected with the council on the community plan. I think that, as we move on with this, we will see more and more come out on it.

Sometimes meetings that are held by Departments are not greatly attended. I went to a few of them in my time, and there was nobody at them. You even asked the Electoral Office to come out and do an exercise to get people registered or get their identification. It said that it would come out as long as you guaranteed that there would be 15 people there. That, in a sense, tells you that there are no big crowds nowadays. The numbers attending your meeting depend on what is on TV and everything else. The community plans should have been given a starting and a finishing date. The way in which they are laid on at the minute, you can roll them out during the whole year until some date next year, and I think that was a mistake.

Mr McAleer: Chair, thanks for letting me in here. I apologise if any of my questions have been asked before. One of the proposals in the Bill is to introduce a statutory duty on Departments and district councils to consider the needs of people living in rural areas and also for DARD to report and monitor that. What will the sanctions be for Departments, councils and the all-Ireland NDPBs that will be affected by this if they do not consider the needs under the Bill?

Ms Warde Hunter: The Bill does not propose sanctions as such. We were upfront about that even back in January. We do not see that as necessarily being part of it. This is about promoting and encouraging. It is about requiring that by placing rural proofing on a statutory footing for Departments and on councils. It is about requiring them to demonstrate and make transparent how they are considering effectively rural proofing. That is where the whole monitoring and scrutiny piece comes in with the collection of the data and the presentation of that before the Assembly.

What I referred to the last time and can confirm now, Mr McAleer, is that, if a citizen were to feel that a Department or a council has not adequately taken account of one's needs as a rural dweller, the normal course of challenge is there: you write to the Department. If that is not adequate and if there is any sense of maladministration, the office of the ombudsman would clearly be the next port of call. We have confirmed that with the ombudsman. Finally, you are into a position of judicial review. This Bill is not proposing methods of sanction beyond those that we recognise are already available to citizens as you progress through any area where you feel that there has been maladministration — I use that term as a catch-all, and I am just double-checking that it is the right phrase — in meeting the needs of the individual. Colette, do you want to add to that?

Mrs McMaster: The proposal for reporting will also be an important part of it. In our engagement with stakeholders, the whole idea of transparency was very important. It is intended that we will draw that together in the report. We will be reporting on what organisations, Departments and councils have done on rural proofing. That report on Departments being laid before the Assembly leaves it open to public scrutiny.

Mr McAleer: I support the legislative route. I think that all the MLAs around the table will agree that we look at things like the cost of rural transport, rural day-care provision and banks closing, and we are saying that decisions on such things have not been rural proofed. My fear is that, if there is not some sort of enforcement, there is a danger that the legislation could lack teeth. While I support the need for legislation, I am trying to work out how exactly the legislation would differ from the mechanism of rural proofing that we have.

Ms Warde Hunter: I appreciate that. I believe that this is why the Minister has brought forward these proposals in the first instance. Notwithstanding the Executive's commitment to the concept of rural proofing already, which has been set out previously, it is getting it into practice that is the key thing. That is why the Minister is bringing forward these proposals and advocating that it needs to be placed on a statutory footing. This is about embedding best practice. This is where there is a duty on DARD to try to support, help, encourage, train and facilitate. The whole range of things that DARD will be clearly seeking to do will be very important, but it will be in the spirit of working positively to promote it rather than having a sort of watchdog element. One of the things that many of our respondents were very favourable about was the issue of openness and transparency. How are Departments and local councils, when they are developing or reviewing policies and services, taking on board, thinking about and striving to meet the need of rural dwellers? How is that being made visible? This is about trying to make it visible so that the individual citizen can see it more and, ultimately, so that, through a report before the Assembly, the Assembly can scrutinise it in the appropriate way.

Mr McAleer: Whilst we obviously all hope for larger turnouts at public consultations, I should say that, from looking at the list of respondents, I know that those individual groups represent large bodies of people. Before those people came to the public consultations, they would have had to carry out their own consultation so that they are articulating the corporate view of those groups. It is important to point out that 32 respondents represent many thousands.

Ms Warde Hunter: A cross section.

Mr Byrne: I want to come back in on a couple of points. I do not want to pass any judgement yet on the integrity of the Bill, but I am concerned that, of the 32 written responses received, 10 referred to DARD's decision that further assessments of the impacts of rural proofing Bill were not required. Obviously, some groups expressed concern that you would be making no further assessment in relation to the Bill. There is also a question about a framework to support the Bill. It begs this question: is there a need for some sort of rural proofing reference group that could be used as an independent advisory body or commentary body? When the whole rural agenda was being created 25 or 30 years ago, Niall Fitzduff was the pioneer of rural proofing philosophy. Do we have such people out there at the moment?

Ms Warde Hunter: If I may, I will hand over to Astrid to comment on that. Although we have had only two meetings of our stakeholder advisory group, I have found those meetings very productive. There is much to be gained from having that cross section of views directly advising the Department, and I want to see that continue. That was always the intention in steering the Bill through its general passage. I will pass to Astrid to comment on one of the specifics.

Ms Stuart: I want to come in on the issue about the views on the conclusion reached by DARD to screen out from further assessment the impacts of the rural proofing Bill. Just two responses referred to that. Any other responses that we have not referred to have just not commented on it, which is why they have not been included. In relation to the equality impact assessment, it was Disability Action that raised a query in relation to the evidence base. The evidence base for the equality screening was drawn from the census 2011 data. Those were the only issues raised in relation to the screenings.

Mr Byrne: Am I right in saying that only four stated that they agreed with DARD's conclusion that there should be no further assessment made?

Ms Stuart: Only four commented on that specific proposal.

The Chairperson (Mr Irwin): Thank you very much for your presentation.

Ms Warde Hunter: Thank you, Mr Chairman and members.