Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I welcome the following representatives from the rural partnership groups: Ms Teresa Canavan and Mr Michael Kelly from Rural Action; Ms Louise Coyle and Ms Ciara Forsythe from the Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network (NIRWN); and Ms Kate Clifford and Ms Samantha Gallagher from Rural Community Network (RCN). In this evidence session, we will have three short briefings, each of five to 10 minutes. First up will be Rural Action, followed by the Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network and then Rural Community Network. After the three briefings, I will open up the meeting for questions, and Committee members can address their questions to any or all of the representatives.

I invite Teresa Canavan and Michael Kelly from Rural Action to brief the Committee first. Are you content with that running order?

Ms Teresa Canavan (Rural Action): Yes. That is fine.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you so much.

Ms Canavan: Thanks very much, Chair, for the opportunity to be here this morning. You are welcome to Cookstown and to the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE). We are based on the site, so it was a very easy commute for us. We had just to walk across the car park. We appreciate it that you have come to Cookstown and are pleased to see so many familiar faces around the table. We welcome the opportunity to put rural development on the agenda. We know that you have a busy morning ahead and that your time is precious, so our aim is to keep our introduction to about five minutes.

We will not say too much about Rural Action. We provided the Committee with a short written overview in advance, and we hope that you have had a chance to read it. All that I will add for anyone who may not know us is that Rural Action was established only in 2019. That having been said, I cannot believe that we will turn six next year. We are a relatively new organisation, but Michael and I have been involved in rural development for over 25 years, working in our communities of Brockagh and Moneyneena and with the Rural Development Council (RDC). I am sure that many of you are aware of that. We therefore come at this not just in a work capacity but as rural dwellers and rural stakeholders who believe passionately in the role and value of rural development.

You will note from the paper that we sent you that our interest and ask is to discuss the very concept of rural development, the extent to which it remains relevant and where the Committee sees it sitting in the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Development. Like many other rural organisations and stakeholders, we are hugely disappointed that the rural policy framework that was designed, developed and launched during Minister Poots's tenure has failed see anything substantial materialise from it. We remind the Committee that the framework was designed following extensive consultation, and I know that a lot of you here were involved in that. The consultation commenced in 2018 and concluded with Minister Poots launching the framework in 2022. At that time, it was stated that there would be a new seven-year rural business and community investment programme. That was viewed by many as being the replacement for the EU rural development programme (RDP), which, as you will be aware, was a key driver of rural development in Northern Ireland for over 30 years.

We know and understand that work is under way to develop a new future rural policy. We welcome that — in fact, we welcome anything that will strengthen rural policy — but we are concerned about the timescales involved, which the Committee has mentioned. Meanwhile, there is a gap that continues to grow as a result of the closure of the rural development programme. We have aired our concerns to the Minister and officials, and they have been receptive. As a rural stakeholder organisation, we will not be found wanting in providing support and assistance to move things on much more quickly than they are currently moving.

The most fundamental issue that we want to discuss is the concept of rural development itself. Have we lost that concept? Does rural affairs encompass rural development? We are continually advised that DAERA has no remit for rural development. If it has no remit for rural development, who does? We totally understand that other Departments have a statutory remit to do things in rural areas, and that is what they should be doing. The Rural Needs Act 2016 is there to help facilitate them to do that, but we argue that the Act is about achieving regional balance and ensuring that Departments deliver for the whole of the region. Regional balance and rural development are two distinct things, however. To explain, rural development as a concept is about the coordinated development of rural areas with a view to improving the quality of life for rural people. It is multidisciplinary and looks at the socio-economic needs of rural areas. As a concept, it seeks to engage rural people to find their own solutions in a bottom-up way. It engages the whole community and can work for the benefit of communities, businesses and farm families. Rural development is often confused with community development, which, again, is different. Funding for rural community development infrastructure does not signal funding for rural development.

Rural development is aided by financial investment, which is usually a combination of support measures from the Department that is responsible for rural development . In our case, for the past 30-odd years, rural development has been aided by the EU rural development programme through the Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland (DANI), the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) and DAERA. It is also about the coordination of resources from a wide range of other Departments. Many of you will be aware of that work through the rural area coordinators, which, alongside the RDC, worked with communities to broker support from other Departments for rural areas. To me, that is what rural development is about. It is not solely a grants programme; it is about collaboration and coordination. Rural development needs to have a lead Department, or else we risk having a series of disconnected initiatives and a duplication of effort. Our question is this: if that lead Department is not DAERA, which Department is doing rural development?

In England, Scotland and Wales, post-Brexit agriculture legislation includes provision for rural development support. That has not happened by accident; it has been planned. There, the role that rural development can play not only in supporting the wider development of rural areas but in offering farm families alternatives in challenging times is identified.

Think back to farm diversification and agritourism schemes under LEADER. We wonder how such schemes will be funded in the future without there being support for rural development in agriculture policy. Ireland still has a rural development programme. We ask for the Committee's support to ensure that the concept of rural development and the promised RDP replacement remain firmly on the agenda. While we all recognise the need to champion rural areas across government and advocate for rural affairs, that does not replace the rural development function, which is about getting out there, working with communities in the broadest sense — communities, community development organisations, businesses, farmers and farm families — and making things happen on the ground. Our ask of the Committee is to keep those issues on the agenda. Every time we ask, we are told that rural development is not within DAERA's statutory remit. We need to find out which Department's remit covers rural development, because it is not happening at the minute.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you. We will move on to our second briefing. I welcome Louise Coyle and Ciara Forsythe from the Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network and ask them to brief the Committee.

Ms Louise Coyle (Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network): Good morning, everybody. I echo Teresa's gratitude that you have come to Cookstown. We are also based in Cookstown, out the Sandholes Road, so we had a slightly longer walk across the car park, but it is literally a two-minute drive to here. We really appreciate it, because part of our rural life is trying to engage and amplify the voice of women, and that often involves getting in a car and trekking to Belfast to chat to people. Your coming here definitely makes a difference and shows that the Committee views rural people and communities as important. Our members will feel the value of that when we report to them. Do not underestimate what your coming here signals to the people whom we represent.

For those of you who do not know, NIRWN has been operational since 2006. We are a membership-based organisation, so everything that we do is informed by our members, whom we are out and about with all the time. We formally and informally canvass their views and ask what is going on with them at whatever moment. As you will all know from your constituency work, that changes. Some themes remain the same, but, week to week and day to day, things can really change. This week, we see a lot of people who are really anxious about the cost of heating their home for their family and themselves. That anxiety has come on very suddenly, and it has definitely created major pressure for some of our members. When I say that things change, that is the kind of thing that I am talking about. Poverty does not change, but how people experience it can change from week to week.

I support everything that Teresa said about rural development. I do not need to repeat what she said — we all chatted to one another to make sure that we got the value out of you — but that does not mean that we do not endorse everything that she said. We feel that the Department and the Committee need to take the lead on rural development. We are happy to be part of looking at the new rural policy with an open mind. We no longer have the security and the significant investment that we had from the European Union, but we now have an opportunity to do something that is indigenous and bespoke.

We need to look at that opportunity and ask, "What can we do for our people, and how can we make what we do work really well for the people whom we all serve?".

Briefly, before I get into what is going on at the minute, I will mention that the AERA Committee issued, on International Women's Day a couple of years ago, its 'Breaking the Grass Ceiling' research report on women in farming and in farming communities. That report has really gone nowhere, for all the reasons that we know, with the Assembly not being in action and everything else. I do not want see it go to waste, because the issues that were raised in what, I must say, was a really great piece of proactive work by the Committee have neither changed nor gone away. In the past couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk about succession planning on farms. How women are being engaged or not is covered very well in that research. We see a role for our organisation there. Although we would say that our colleagues in Rural Support are certainly the farming people, our expertise as women is in the field of leadership and empowerment. A clear need came out of that research for that work to be done or, certainly, for it to be well under way. We have lost a lot of time as a result of everything else.

We get resourcing through the Department, but we get it by a circuitous route, through the tackling rural poverty and social isolation framework (TRPSI). That allows us, as an organisation, to lever in money and support. That money funds two part-time posts in our organisation. We have eight members of staff, however. We have lots of programmes going on. To be honest, every one of them, without exception, is about tackling rural poverty and social isolation. My colleague Ciara is here. She will tell you a little about our UK Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) project, Women Breaking Barriers. The project is directly about tackling economic inactivity. We know that women experience more economic inactivity and that there are clear reasons for that. That is why our programme is called that. We are trying to remove the barriers that cause women to be economically active. Ciara will tell you how the project is going.

It comes back to the question of what will replace EU structural funds. The UK Shared Prosperity Fund project is due to end in March. The Labour Government have committed to providing extension funding for a year until they decide what they want to do with the programme. In the UK, which includes us, there will be a 40% funding cut across the board. There has already been a funding cut. Most of you will know of organisations in your constituency that received European social fund money for education and training. The SPF did not replace that funding with like-for-like funding, and there is now talk about cutting it again. I know that some of your party colleagues will be raising the issue of what that means for our region. Ours is the only project that delivers specifically for rural women. There are only two women's projects, so the funding for women has decreased overall, and now it may be cut again. What I am saying is that we are delivering projects rurally, but we are the only ones with the remit to do so. That has a powerful impact. I will hand over to Ciara, who will say a wee bit about that, and you can then come back to me. Ciara is our Women Breaking Barriers development officer.

Ms Ciara Forsythe (Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network): Thanks to the Committee for having me. Every day, I speak with women who are economically inactive. We engage with over 300 women from across Northern Ireland. Two of the main issues raised are childcare and caring responsibilities. As we all know, there are long waiting lists for crèches, nurseries and childminders. We have mums who have to look after their adult children who live at home. We have women who have to stay at home to look after elderly parents. There are a lot of single older men and women living rurally whose neighbours take care of them, provide them with food and ensure that they get to their doctor appointments. Doing that also requires access to transport. On a morning like this, it is not just as easy to get children to school or to where childcare is provided, so transport is another big issue that women face. The cost of living, poverty and the isolation that comes with poverty are other big issues. Louise spoke about heating. I have had perhaps 16 calls this week alone from women who are worried. They are saying, "I wasn't expecting this", "I haven't planned or budgeted for this" or, "I don't have the resources". They are buying for their aunts or uncles or other family families. Even older women who are receiving a pension are having to pay to make sure that their grandchildren's homes are heated. All that is going unseen, but I hear it daily. Women come to me, as they do not know what supports are available. Provision of support in rural areas is a lot harder to access.

I do my best to go out and talk to those women to inform them of what is available. At the same time, we try to empower them and build their confidence by saying, "You are making a massive difference to your community", but all that they do is going unseen. Nobody says to them, "You are doing a fantastic job". If they are on benefits, they are perhaps being asked why that is the case. All the women whom I work with are economically inactive. The majority of those who are on benefits do not want to be on benefits; they want to have a life and a career. They want more for themselves, their family and their community but are stuck because the services are not available. Those are the main issues.

Another issue is violence against women and girls. I know that the Government are dealing with that, but the issue is not going away. The situation is not changing, so we need to do something. Violence is rife in rural areas. There is child-on-parent violence and domestic violence. A lot of women talk to me about their personal safety and wonder what is available to them, and there is not much out there to which I can direct them. I just want to make the Committee aware of what women face.

Ms Coyle: Ciara has articulated clearly that it is a training programme that we run, and you are hearing all the things that Ciara hears daily. The magic of our programme is that it is bespoke to every woman. We spend a lot of time in one-to-one chats with women saying, "Why are you not in work? What kind of work would you like to do? Where do you see yourself going?", and we help build them up. Lots of that involves signposting them to other supports that are available, because rural people do not always know what is available to them. If it is not visible in their locality, it can be hard for them to access support.

The success of our training programme is that we have had over 300 women go through it in nine months. We have women who are currently on the programme or who have had engagement with us. We now have 40 women in rural areas who are in sustained employment, which is employment for more than six months. That is the result of a nine-month programme, so it is working for our rural women, but it is labour-intensive. Sometimes, people just need to be heard and something that is bespoke.

Ms Forsythe: It is about having somebody in their corner whom they can bounce off. I never even got to say that it was a training programme. We offer a training programme, but most of what we do is one-to-one work. It is giving a woman support and an outlet for her to know that we believe in her. We are letting her know that we are there for her, and that really makes a difference.

Ms Coyle: We also see that housing is an issue, and we are not just seeing that through that programme. Housing is a complex issue that is not dissociated from any of those other issues. There is a lack of available housing, but violence against women and girls really impacts on homelessness for women. Women are trying to be rehomed in their local area, where their kids go to school. I do not need to explain that to you, but we see it a lot.

If people are being intimidated by paramilitaries into leaving their home, they get 70 housing points. If women are being intimidated by a partner in a domestic situation, they get 20 points. We think that the two are comparable. If women are being intimidated and cannot live in that space any more, there should be no hierarchy.

Ms Forsythe: A threat is a threat. To say that somebody who is experiencing domestic violence is of less importance than somebody who is being intimidated by somebody else is not OK. We cannot have an ending violence against women and girls strategy yet say, "You are down here. You would be getting more points if you were being threatened by somebody else". We need to change that.

Ms Coyle: The issues are complex and are not all for the Committee or DAERA to address. If you were to do a temperature check of the situation out there, however, you would see that it is about how all the issues are interconnected. They are manifested differently in rural areas. The rural experience is different, so sometimes the solution looks different. Often, that costs more money. It is more expensive to address the issues in rural areas. That is why we do not have nice buses serving everywhere that we need to go. I fully support regional investment and regional balance. I am one of those people who, because of my job and also probably because I am nerdy, listens in to Committee meetings a lot, and, when I hear talk of regional balance, I do not hear rural areas being referred to at all. I hear regional balance between Derry and Belfast referenced. I fully endorse the need for regional balance between Derry and Belfast, but to reference only those places is to forget that 40% of us do not live in either of them and that we have experienced historical underinvestment.

I do not need to give you the stats now, but there has absolutely been historical underinvestment in rural women. The budget that we get for women is about 1·3%. That tells you where rural sits and where women sit. When new policy is being considered, it needs to be gender-proofed and rural-proofed. That applies when cuts need to be made to the UK SPF money or whatever else. We have to ask whether that decision has been rural-proofed and gender-proofed. We have to ask whether the policy has taken rural-proofing and gender-proofing into account. The draft Programme for Government was not properly rural-proofed. It is not OK for the Executive to say that they will do it after the fact.

Kate will tell you loads about rural-proofing. I may be jumping in ahead of her, and I do not want to do that. I will make the point, however, that account needs to be taken of rural need before making a decision, not after. The thought should not be, "How might that work now?". That is not the purpose of rural-proofing. There seems to be a huge lack of understanding in all Departments of what its purpose is, and that means that organisations such as ours end up having to do the rural-proofing, and none of us has the resource or the time to do that. Nevertheless, our job is to advocate for our members, so we end up having to do it, and that is not OK.

The tackling rural poverty and social isolation framework is one of the best initiatives across government. It is excellent at targeting investment in such a way as to allow more money to be levered in. It is representative of how we all need to work: smarter and not harder. The TRPSI framework goes some way to being a model for how other Departments need to resource rural areas. It is not the job of DAERA alone to deliver for rural people.

To go back to what Teresa said, the message that I would like to leave the Committee with is this: if you do not lead on what needs to happen in rural areas, nobody else will. Rural is an afterthought, if it is even that. The rural voice and experience simply do not feature in most of our policymaking and decision-making, and women feature less again.

I could talk to you all day about what is going on, but I will leave it there. You can ask me whatever questions you would like to. Things are not easy for the people whom we work for, and they are getting increasingly difficult. We need to have a flexible new policy that allows us to adapt.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you, Louise and Ciara. You are on your own, Kate. My apologies to Samantha for not noticing earlier. I invite you to brief the Committee.

Ms Kate Clifford (Rural Community Network): I tender Samantha's apologies. The challenge of being an organisation with only a small number of staff is that we get called to be at something as important as this meeting, but the Trussell Trust event that is happening this morning on rural poverty and on food poverty in rural areas is equally important. We have been all over those issues for the past number of years. Samantha is at that event this morning. I apologise on her behalf.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the Committee today. I want to remind you of why we have a rural development policy and of why having a rural development programme is absolutely essential in Northern Ireland. We work as an NGO across rural communities from Kilkeel to Limavady and from Rathlin to Belleek. We are working across Northern Ireland, as are all our colleagues, but the issue for us is the need to have an overall framework within which we can work.

I want to remind people of why we exist as an organisation. As an NGO, our key function is to challenge poverty and deprivation. That is the key element of the work that we do. I will therefore focus on rural poverty, access to services, social isolation, deprivation and the lasting impact of austerity. I am sorry that it is not really bells and whistles stuff; it is about the negative stuff, because we address regularly the hard-edged issues. I will also focus on the Rural Needs Act, what it has done, what it needs to do and how it needs to be strengthened, because it really needs to be strengthened.

Rural poverty remains a significant challenge in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) has stated that 22% of households in rural areas live in poverty. We would say that they live in absolute poverty, which means that they do not have enough money to meet their basic everyday needs. Poverty is driven largely by lower-than-average incomes, fewer employment opportunities and higher living costs. The index of multiple deprivation (IMD) reveals that rural areas, particularly in County Fermanagh and County Tyrone and in parts of County Armagh, have higher levels of deprivation in key areas such as income, employment and health. We are in conversations with sister organisations across the UK about this, but, if we flip the multiple deprivation measures, the index of multiple deprivation does not take account of access to services. The weighting for that is much lower than, we think, it should be for rural areas. The major issue with income deprivation in Counties Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh is that around 17% of rural residents are unable to meet their basic financial needs. If we flip that to see how many are unable to access services, the percentage increases massively, and that is for access to basic services.

Access to services is a major issue for rural populations. We face barriers to accessing healthcare, accessing education, particularly third-level and other education beyond secondary school, and accessing social services. The reasons for that are mainly to do with physical, geographical isolation, which is something that cannot be changed. Lack of transport infrastructure is a massive issue. A total of 27% of rural residents have to travel for longer than 30 minutes to access a GP. Many rural areas lack adequate mental health support services. Public transport is limited, making it difficult for people to attend medical appointments, access social services or even participate in community activities.

All of that exacerbates social isolation, particularly for older adults, those who have mobility challenges and those who have no access to a car. There was a report on the BBC NI news recently about all bus services in rural areas ending at 6.00 pm. If you are a young kid who wants to attend a youth club or sports facility and you cannot walk there or do not have parents who can take you, you may as well not be involved in any extracurricular activities at all, and we know the benefit of such activities. I have a child who plays hockey, and she played it competitively at her school. If we did not have access to two cars, she could not have done what she needed to do, which was to head to Jordanstown and elsewhere across Northern Ireland for matches. It is different when kids are involved with the GAA, because their clubs tend to be local, but they still have to go to matches and blitzes, and they still have to be taken there. Often, being involved in school activities presents a real difficulty for kids.

A PowerPoint presentation that we did, which will be sent to you, has a scenario of a child who leaves Garrison at 7.30 am and cannot get home again until 6.15 pm, and that is on the school bus. If children stay at school late, they cannot get home at all, because it is 26 miles back home. The cost, which is around £14 return on a bus, is also an issue. All those things need to be factored in when we think about rural poverty and social isolation. Sometimes, it is just about the cost of getting somewhere. I was in a meeting yesterday with financial services, and one conversation was about a post office closing in Belfast. Denise from the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) said, "So, somebody had to get two buses?", and I was thinking, "Where would you get two buses where we live?". There are not two buses to get, so it is about that sort of thing.

Approximately one in five rural residents reports feeling isolated, and that impacts massively on mental and physical well-being.

Social isolation is a growing concern in many communities. We found that 20% of rural residents reported feeling isolated due solely to their geographical location and the limits on their access to social activities and support networks. An ageing population compounds that. In 2021, 20% of people living in rural areas were over 65 years old. Those individuals experienced loneliness, with less access to social services and an increasing risk of depression and other mental health issues. All those people are supported by our infrastructure of community and voluntary sector groups. They keep those people from depression and mental health collapse.

We have had austerity since 2010. We jokingly refer to the Shared Prosperity Fund as the "shared austerity fund" because it is not doing what it is supposed to do. We have had a 25% reduction in funding for services such as rural transport, healthcare and education. That is about funding being reduced, not the impact of inflation, interest rates and all the other costs that have risen over time. It has led to a reduction in community facilities, fewer local government services and a growing reliance on charity-based initiatives to hold up those who have been left behind.

Austerity has worsened food insecurity. Research by FareShare Northern Ireland shows that one in four rural households struggles to afford food, with many relying on local food banks. That is a direct consequence of cost-of-living increases. In thinking about that, we need to take account of the fact that only 10 rural towns are connected to the gas mains network. The minimum delivery of oil, without considering the jugs of oil that people can buy, costs £200. Most people who are on low incomes do not have £200 to spend in one go on an oil delivery, and that also impacts on the Red Cross, St Vincent de Paul and other charities. The cost of a minimum delivery means that the charities now deliver coal or other fuel to the doors of those who do not have the £200, because, in many cases, the charities cannot afford £200 either. Many of the charities and churches that we work with say that the reliance on oil in rural areas means that charities that normally step in and top up gas vouchers cannot do so in rural areas because the cost is so extortionate.

We cannot forget that rural Northern Ireland is a border region. We have worked so hard over the past 25 to 30 years to have a border with seamless social and economic connections across it. Brexit caused a rupture — that fact is irrefutable — and a border has appeared again. People who live and work on both sides of the border in different jurisdictions — I was speaking about financial services again yesterday — cannot get mortgages or loans because they live in one jurisdiction and work and, perhaps, have their bank account in another. It is really difficult for people.

Rural development takes account of border-proofing. It is part of the remit of rural development and community groups, and it is really important for any rural development programme to take account of what happens on a cross-border basis. We have cross-border infrastructure with an interdependence when it comes to childcare. Some of our childcare facilities are in the South of Ireland simply because of the geography of a town. People from the North make use of childcare facilities and schools in the South and vice versa.

We need to think about our rural development policy as the South begins to thrive and to invest more in rural development. Small rural towns in the South are benefiting from windfalls and a really succinct rural development policy. We are falling behind. When you headed across the border this summer, the joke was, "How do you know you are in the South? The roads are better". That used to be the opposite way around; that is where we are. As you go into rural towns in the South of Ireland, you see thriving community hubs with lots of investment in key services. Changes to banking legislation in the South mean that people have access to banks in very many rural areas. We do not see that in the North.

Whatever your political views on it, these jurisdictions are linked. If one area thrives and another does not, we will start losing population and talent to the South of Ireland. We see that with our nurses and doctors. Rural development policy needs to take account of that.

Cross-border cooperation and peacebuilding are absolutely essential to what we do as an organisation. We are absolutely all over peacebuilding in rural communities and areas. Big parts of our work are around North/South and east-west cooperation. We are absolutely welded to the fact that, as a region, we could benefit from looking up and looking out: looking to the South of Ireland to see what is happening there, looking east-west and learning from colleagues there and joining lobbies across the UK to lobby the Government hard for rural development to be a feature in DEFRA and in the broader working of what goes on at Westminster. I will not go into it.

Big issues for us are about what can be done to resolve some of that. Access to healthcare and education absolutely needs to be addressed. Our issues are about how we do healthcare well in rural areas. We have had some really good examples of telemedicine, remote working and peripatetic clinics that appear in communities and are accessible and affordable. Again, good rural-proofing and a good rural development policy would speak to health services and health service provision in rural areas and allow that equity of access to services. We are doing a piece of work with Macmillan Cancer Support on why people are not turning up at appointments and why people from rural areas have poorer outcomes when they get cancer. Part of that is about not having access to transport and patients having to rely on neighbours, friends and relatives to help them to access centres where treatments are provided. If you are from Fermanagh or outside Omagh and you have to go to Altnagelvin Area Hospital, you rely on friends and family to get you there regularly because there are no transport connections. We need to rural-proof those services. Macmillan tells us that, if a neighbour, relative or social car scheme is not available, those patients do not turn up. If they turn up and there is a complexity with their treatment but they have a relative waiting outside, it is likely that they will not wait with a doctor to hear what that complexity is or to have it sorted; they will just get into the car and go because they do not want to inconvenience the person who is giving them the lift. All that impacts on the health and well-being of rural residents.

The Rural Needs Act 2016 was a step to ensure that government policies and programmes consider the specific needs of rural communities. It requires Departments to have "due regard" for the social, economic and environmental needs of rural areas before they design policies, strategies and services. The Act provides a framework. The benefits of the Act are that it has got us to the table. Louise has been at the table on violence against women and girls. We have been at the table on addressing paramilitarism. We are at the table with DFC. We were at the table during the COVID pandemic. The Rural Needs Act got us to the table. The impact or effect that it had is that, now, when we walk into a room, everybody rolls their eyes and asks "What have we done for rural areas?". Brilliant. I love to see that happening. The issue for us is that we have no bite. We are a toothless tiger. We need to create the teeth for that tiger now.

Where do we need to go with the Rural Needs Act? We need proof of concept. We definitely need a judicial review of some sort to put legislative cases behind it so that it will grow teeth. We also need to flex muscle around the Rural Needs Act and call to account the really poor rural needs impact assessments that have been done retrospectively instead of proactively. We need to look at how that Act can be strengthened and made a bit more robust than it currently is. At times, it feels a little bit tokenistic.

We are wise enough to know that, when we get to the table, we have to be clear about what we are asking for and about scenarios in rural areas, but, often, what we lack — it is what the officials have been talking about — is the evidence base. Data is not sufficiently disaggregated in Northern Ireland between rural and urban areas, so, often, we work on anecdotal evidence. "Anecdotal evidence" is used pejoratively, but it is people's lived experience. Often, we use people's lived experience to make the case for what we need. I urge the Committee to take on board that, as Teresa said, we need a rural development programme for Northern Ireland. Over the years, the rural development programme created opportunities for us to show how things could be done differently, how issues could be addressed effectively, how rural could be levelled up and how we could create equity in rural areas. It showed all that. What it did not do was to mainstream. We saw the Maximising access to services, grants and benefits in rural areas programme (MARA) working. MARA unleashed millions of pounds in unclaimed benefits in rural areas, put money into people's pockets and alleviated poverty. TRPSI addressed rural isolation. We saw all that happening, but none of it was mainstreamed. Departments got away with saying, "That was a really good project. Well done. Congratulations", and walking away. We need a rural development programme that mainstreams those really good projects, such as the rural transport fund with its social car schemes — a social endeavour run by volunteers — that unleash the massive potential of people in rural areas.

That all needs to be made mainstream and not seen as low-hanging fruit, which is how all that we do in rural Northern Ireland has constantly been seen. The low-hanging fruit is the stuff that gets cut first. As soon as budgets are tightened, we lose rural transport. As soon as budgets are tightened, we lose MARA. As soon as budgets are tightened, the networks and women's projects are under threat. It happens every time. Unless we have robust legislation, a robust plan and a robust Committee that shouts about that and stands with us, we are on a hiding to nothing and will just repeat the past 10 years. I have been CEO of RCN since 2011 and only once had a two-year funding contract. We are in survival mode. We are sitting in the water with our life jackets on, just treading water. If I had known 10 years ago that I had 10 years' funding, we would be in a different place now.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you, Kate. Are you finished?

Ms Clifford: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Brilliant. There was a bit of a cliffhanger at the end; it was very good.

I thank you all for your powerful presentations. They are really useful. I do not want to speak for members, but, having worked with a lot of these guys for a number of years, I could see their ears pricking up on certain topics, so I know that they will pick up on them. Most members want to ask questions, so I ask that we keep them as succinct as possible — I will try to set the standard for that — and that we keep the answers as succinct as possible to ensure that the maximum number of questions is asked and we have the chance to record the information. There is an incredible amount of stuff, and I would love a one-to-one with you, but, setting that to one side, I will not direct my questions to anybody in particular. Just see if you can pick them up, if that is OK.

A lot of stuff that you said registered with me because of the all-party groups that I sit on. You mentioned loneliness and social isolation, which are big things for me, so I am looking for someone to flesh those out a wee bit.

One thing that I did not hear about, although I know that it exists, is the impact on people with disabilities, so maybe somebody could speak to that. We heard about gender, and there was some stuff about young people and about older people, but maybe someone could give me a wee bit on what the impact of the rural context is on people with disabilities and what that looks like. We know that lots of legislation, such as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA), is massively out of date and needs to be rural-proofed. I imagine that the experience of someone with disabilities in the rural setting is different from that of such a person in the urban setting.

The last point that I want to get to — you started to talk about it, Kate, so maybe you could expand on that — is about data and its not being segregated enough. That issue very much popped up with COVID, and we have not utilised that experience to best effect. Those are my three things, and I am happy if each of you wants to take a wee bit.

Ms Clifford: I will take a little bit on disability, if people are OK with that. Per head of population, as many people are born with disabilities in rural areas as in urban areas. Equally, per head of population, the number of people with acquired disabilities in rural areas is the same as it is in urban areas, yet services and service provision always go to urban centres. This is not an urban versus rural thing, but, in areas where services — access to healthcare and transport — are limited, we have seen young people with, for example, an acquired brain injury or a disability that has developed and they have reached a particular age living in a nursing home with elderly people with dementia as opposed to being cared for at home, because the services are not there or the access, through disabled-access transport, for example, is not there. For many years, the community and voluntary sector has plugged that gap. It is the people in the community who wrap their arms around the young people with disabilities and include them. We have had inclusion in the GAA, sport and football, but those examples of inclusion are few and far between.

Two children leave my community every day to go to school in Jordanstown. We do not do nearly enough. My organisation highlights to clubs, communities and people involved in social activities the issue of the inclusion of people with disabilities, but it is hard for those clubs and organisations, which are living on a shoestring, to adapt their buildings or even to understand how to make that step to being more inclusive, and, at times, the services are not there to help them to make that leap.

However difficult it is for those of us who do not have a disability, for those who have disabilities it is even more complex. It comes down to various things. For example, we did a rural needs impact assessment of parking charges in towns. People with disabilities may have limited earning potential or income. There are also issues that mean that they have to travel by car because there is no transport system to take them. When they come into town, the parking charges are excessive. Those are all added complications and barriers to people's inclusion, and they need to be addressed.

There is also respite. I could talk for a long time on —

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): It is compounded by rurality.

Ms Clifford: Rurality and geography create additional barriers, which is why rural-proofing needs to come in there.

Ms Coyle: It is a case of understanding how issues play out in a rural area. Account is not being taken of rural needs. If you do not live in a rural area or are not talking to people who do before you rural-proof, how do you know how an issue manifests itself? We do not expect people to know, but we expect them to try to find out before they do the rural needs assessment.

We see a lot of the impact on not just people living with disabilities but the people caring for them. There is a toxic media image of what somebody who is not working looks like. Often, we find that people have to come out of work and change their work status in order to care for people with disabilities, whether that is elder care or children with high-level needs. There is no recognition of the carer in the middle of that. Who is looking after their well-being and mental health? What about the stress that they have when thinking about, for example, taking people to appointments? We find that how far you are from healthcare services is a factor in people coming out of work. If you are caring for somebody who has a lot of appointments, you cannot keep taking time off work. It is not just a morning off. If it is a 10.00 am appointment, depending on where it is, you might not be back home until 2.00 pm.

That is where the centralisation of services sometimes comes in. We understand that, yes, you want all your experts in one place, of course, but that assumes an infrastructure that does not exist here: ambulance services, road infrastructure and the means to get rural people to that expertise. We did research on cancer services and breast cancer. When we canvassed our members, they said that they were not opposed to travelling for support. The issue that they have is how to get to it. It is not that they have to go further and that more of their day is taken up. It is the how and the cost, including paying for hospital parking and so on, that come into play there. It is not just the disabled person; it is who is providing the care and the impact on them, their family and their ability to have their own social life, which leads into loneliness.

All of that is so difficult to unpick because one thing cascades into another. Having one barrier is difficult — anyone living rurally generally has that access barrier — but the more barriers you have, the harder life is. It is as simple as that. Living rurally just puts everything into a different context.

Truthfully, it does not matter how often we are in these spaces: I am not sure that that lands with the people who write the policies and make the decisions.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I came across a good term for it this week: "pen ploughers".

Ms Canavan: I will pick up on the point about data. A lot of this is down to a lack of understanding, because we do not have a sufficient evidence base. We need the statistics, but we also need to take a bottom-up approach and to have communities feeding into it. More of an action research approach is needed. We get quite frustrated about the issue with the evidence base. A number of years ago, the RDC was responsible for the evidence base. The review of public administration changed that, moving the responsibility into the Department. Patsy and William might know that we delivered numerous 'A Picture of Rural Change' reports that brought together all the data, including GIS mapping, and looked at all the issues. We presented those reports to government. For some reason, however, that responsibility was moved back to the Department. That was probably in 2006, and, since then, there has not been one report. We get very frustrated when we hear that there is no evidence base, because all the statistics are there.

Ms Clifford: The data exists.

Ms Canavan: The data exists, but nobody has pulled it together for our rural circumstances. That goes back to my point about there being no remit for rural development. If the Department continues to say that there is no remit for rural development, how do we get that evidence base? How do we inform it with a bottom-up approach if we are not involved in rural development?

Everything is connected. It is about the Department taking responsibility and having a remit for rural development, taking the stuff that we do on the ground, feeding that in and bringing an evidence base that genuinely takes the statistics and information from the ground and shows what we can do to make a change. Having a rural development remit would provide those solutions. It is important to link everything.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I will bring Declan in in two minutes, but I will just finish with this point. I imagine that, like most people, you were disappointed with the draft Programme for Government. You will forgive us, given that there are only two and a half years left in the mandate. I imagine, however, that, if and when we get back after the election in two and a half years' time, there will be a wonderful opportunity to ensure that there are measurements and outcomes from the Programme for Government.

I have one final question, which will require a short answer. I am concerned about the cold snap and the potential for a cold winter. You talked about the fact that gas is not available for most people in rural areas. I have a simple question about oil. Is there any discrepancy between the oil price per litre in the west and that in the east of the Province — in and around places such as Belfast — where there is competition with gas? Is oil dearer in the west? If so, the difference in earning potential between the two areas does not match that. Is that fair?

Ms Forsythe: There is a discrepancy. There could be a discrepancy compared with Belfast, and there could be a discrepancy between Coleraine and Fermanagh. There are cost discrepancies all over the place. The price is going up, and the cold snap has hit. I checked the price of oil for my home, and it has gone up.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Rather than town to town, I am thinking specifically about discrepancies between urban and rural locations. Is there a marked difference?

Ms Forsythe: There is. It is cheaper in urban areas, where there are more people in a condensed area.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): There is also competition from gas in those areas.

Ms Forsythe: There is competition. There are providers that do not travel outside certain postcodes. There is no market competition here, so they can charge what they like, and we just have to accept it or go cold.

Ms Clifford: We run the Rural Residents' Forum with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE), and we try to step up oil-buying clubs, but one issue that we have with oil-buying clubs is that people in rural areas are loyal to their local supplier. They are loyal to their local supplier because that supplier will come out to fill a tank on Christmas Eve or when there is a funeral, and they understand that someone might not pay their bill for a month or two. There is loyalty there. That is how communities work: "You know my father, and you know we're good for it. We don't have the money now. I'm a farmer, and money might not come in until the end of next month". There is a loyalty in how people do business. The oil-buying clubs came in to that environment expecting people to go for the cheapest price, haggle and all of that. That works really well in an urban setting, but our experience is that, in a rural setting, loyalty to the local supplier overrides the desire for a lower price, because there is an understanding there: your supplier has dug you out of a hole several times and you do not want to put him out of business or go past your —.

Ms Canavan: That is just what happens.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you. I am glad that we teased out that wee bit about rural communities. That loyalty to each other transcends all else.

Ms Clifford: It is hugely important.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): It is phenomenal — that whole religious level of loyalty is incredible. I will keep quiet now and let Declan come in.

Mr McAleer: Thank you, Chair. It is great to be here. There are so many things that I could say, because everything that you have said has chimed with me. For me, even driving 20 miles up the road to get here is like a dream because it is usually a 150-mile round trip to and from my place of work.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): We hear that every week, just so you know. [Laughter.]

Mr McAleer: It is great. It is important that we come here and listen, and there is no better place than County Tyrone.

There is so much that I want to say, but here are a couple of points. Teresa, you mentioned that the rural policy was consulted on and launched in 2022 but we still have not seen it. I flagged that with the Department yesterday, so, hopefully, that will be used as evidence and will keep the pressure on. Louise, the Committee published the 'Breaking the Grass Ceiling' report a number of years ago. We have not seen progress, but the timing could now be good. I suggest, Chair, that we write to the Department about that because, given that agricultural policy and rural policy are being developed now and the fact that there has been a time lag in implementation, it could be a good time to make progress.

I was thinking about the grass ceiling the other night. We were at the Eikon exhibition centre and heard Jessica Pollock speak. The previous Committee visited her farm in Castlederg, and we heard from her directly about how different the experience of farms just on this side of the border is from those on the Southern side, where there are investment programmes that incentivise women into agriculture through farm support. Perhaps we should remind the Department to dig out that report, look at the learning in it and use the opportunity that there is now that programmes are being developed to address the under-representation of women as part of them. The timing would actually be good, so perhaps the delay has been good in that sense.

Ms Coyle: The delay has happened, Declan. I am saying that we should delay no longer.

Mr McAleer: Exactly.

Ms Coyle: If you delay long enough, we have to redo everything. We have been in a constant cycle of doing that, and I am just trying to avoid it.

Mr McAleer: I am just getting to the question. Ciara mentioned interconnectedness and the importance of the rural development programme. The issues span Departments: Infrastructure; Health, regeneration; the measure of multiple deprivation is a Finance issue; economic development; the Executive Office, and Justice issues to do with domestic violence and paramilitarism. Do you think that having a cross-departmental rural development programme, perhaps led by DAERA, would be a way of moving forward, rather than pigeonholing the programme in DAERA, given its limited budget? The issues reach further than DAERA.

Ms Coyle: That is how it has to be.

Ms Canavan: That is rural development, Declan. We have been involved in rural development for years. You need a lead Department to have somewhere for it to sit, but it is about that Department coordinating and working across government. I have used the example before but will give it again. I am involved in a community group at home. We were a rural development project in Brockagh back in the 1990s. You will know it, Patsy, as a few members probably do. It would not have happened without coordination by the Department, which came in and worked with us as a community to develop a vision and a project. The smallest amount of money that we got for that project was from DARD, but DARD's support brokered money from every other Department. That is what rural development is, but that has been lost. If there is no remit for rural development in any legislation relating to the Department, who takes the lead to coordinate money across government?

It was always cross-departmental; it never relied solely on the European programme.

The big rural development projects in the early days were driven by a bottom-up community development approach but brokered money from the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), PEACE and the millennium halls refurbishment scheme. They brokered money from all sorts of funders, because there was a rural development ethos, and somebody was coordinating that effort. It always has to be cross-departmental. All the issues that we have discussed today will be addressed by other Departments, but rural communities cannot navigate that. They cannot sit down and say, "We've to go to 10 different government Departments". There needs to be a rural development support function to support them. It needs to be about community development and communities but also about farmers, farm families and rural businesses. Without a rural development remit in the Department, how will that happen? It is not happening.

At the minute, when we mention anything about rural to the Department, we are told, "Go to this Department", "Go to that Department", or, if we mention rural development, we are told, "We do not have a remit for rural development". We are going backwards. We have not learned from the programmes that we have delivered over the past 30 years; we have not taken the goodness out of them to develop something new in a post-Brexit environment. We need to get that right, but it has always happened across government.

Mr McAleer: This is the second and last thing that I want to mention. You have all mentioned TRPSI as one of the best programmes in government. You mentioned about it being hard to predict year-on-year, and Kate used the analogy of the life jacket. Would it be appropriate or more powerful if the Department were to give statutory protection to the TRPSI programme, rather than you not knowing what it will be from year to year?

Ms Clifford: The answer is a straight yes. The programme has to be flexible and respond to need. It has to be able to bend and shape depending on the crisis. None of us could have predicted COVID, and there has also been the fallout from Brexit, austerity measures, the change of Government and the change in the direction of government. All those things have impacted on communities. We saw the way that communities responded during COVID. It is not that we are without talent or people, but we are often without strategic oversight and overview and consistent investment.

Look at what has happened with neighbourhood renewal. It was consistent investment in communities. Some stuff works well, and some works less well. The lovely thing about TRPSI is that, when it has worked well — we have seen the results of it working well — the Department has remained consistent in its support of it. It is really disappointing that, when that has happened, we have seen back-pedalling. I cannot overstate the fighting that we have had with Departments about retaining rural services. We have sat with Departments and shouted loudly about there not being enough resource coming into rural areas. We have shouted about why the social housing target for rural areas is not being met. Sometimes we get fobbed off with Departments saying, "We need a paper", "We need a business case", or whatever else. The reality is, however, that, when something works and we know that it is effecting really good change in communities, it should be resourced. Our difficulty has not been with DAERA resourcing TRPSI; DAERA has believed strongly in it over the years. Our difficulty is that it has not been mainstreamed to the people we have partnered with in order to demonstrate how they might do business differently in rural areas.

Ms Coyle: There is also something in the fact that giving it that weight is a message to rural people. I cannot state that enough. The people whom we talk to often feel neglected, misunderstood, left behind and not delivered for, and those things really make a difference. I was not just being polite when I said that it would make a difference to our members to see you come here today. Those things matter, and putting that on a statutory footing will matter. However, it is important for the Committee to understand the pressures that we are under as organisations representing rural with the resources that we have. As Kate said, it is great to be invited to the tables, and, because of the Rural Needs Act, we are, but we are splitting ourselves in — .

Ms Clifford: Twenty directions.

Ms Coyle: Other Departments say, "Please come and sit on this co-design panel", which is a commitment to go to something every month over maybe one or two years and follow up. We know that that needs to happen. Our members need to have their voices heard at those tables, but nobody is resourcing that.

Ms Clifford: This week alone, this afternoon is a meeting of the Interim Regional Planning Commission, and we sit on that as advisers. This morning is the AERA Committee. Yesterday was banking. The day before was paramilitary coercive control in communities. We were asked to provide a response to the 'People and Place' review that has to be in by tomorrow. There are Programme for Government consultations. We are across every Department, and they are calling on the same five or six people who have long service in rural development to tell them what the rural scenario is. There is me and Samantha. There are the people at this table and the people in the back row, and that is it, representing across every Department and responding to every policy and every change, rural-proofing all that is going on and shouting loudly when they get it wrong. In the Department for Communities alone, we are dealing with housing, art, culture, heritage, sport — it is all those issues and transport on top of that. We are not one bit against reform of the health service, but the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) at the moment is a complete disaster for the people of County Fermanagh, and there is no infrastructure support in and around the hospital. The A5 upgrade is going to happen, but, if there is no emergency support for general surgery in the South West Acute Hospital, how will people get to Altnagelvin Area Hospital when the A5 closes? We know that the A5 needs to happen. There is no pathway for care or planning around that. If we are not at the table shouting about and raising those issues, who is?

That is the issue, and we are supporting the groups that are shouting loudly in their communities, but we are also doing the fact-checking in the background of all that. We are fact-checking the Ambulance Service, the Western Trust and the groups that are on the ground. That takes an enormous amount of time. On top of that, we are trying to be over every piece of legislation, change and service plan. It is really tough, and we do that on year-on-year funding of 80 grand per year. It is does not add up. I am not crying poor mouth. We are an organisation that has stayed afloat, and we have stayed afloat with a life jacket on, but it is the same for every one of us: we are not being resourced to do the work that we do, and we could do it a lot better if we had some consistency of funding and proper investment in what we do.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I am minded that we will have another presentation from another couple of groups at some stage. We are running behind, which is partly our fault because we started a bit late. I am just going to ask, in terms of questions, if we can —.

Mr McGlone: Thank you very much for your presentation, and for your valuable work down through the years. For any of us who are active in communities and representing our constituents at all, the key policy area that I am looking at — at the time, some of us had reservations about it — is the Rural Needs Act. We were worried — I know that I was when it was going through — that maybe it did not have sufficient power and could become a tick-box exercise conducted in perception, as we would see it, by city dwellers about how, they think, rural dwellers might be.

Now I am looking at the reality. The reality is that housing waiting lists are growing. I was with Women's Aid last week, seeing a situation where the only offer of a house or maybe a hostel for people who might be local is in Omagh, Newry or Belfast and they have youngsters at local schools. There are others who are waiting for social housing or private housing. At the moment, I have between 300 and 400 houses on my books that cannot get planning permission. That drives up pricing, availability and private rents, and there is all that to deal with and the poverty that ensues.

We move on to health. Many will have seen on TV recently that a surgery closed in Magherafelt. That surgery was run by a doctor who, God rest him, died on the day that the surgery closed. He was a good doctor who was held in the highest of esteem, but the way the Department handled that was really awful. In trying to manage that, people were just scattergunned to another 13 practices in the hope that that would work. Fingers crossed that it does, because people were left very worried.

We move on to rural isolation. Services for domiciliary care seem to get worse every year, especially in our rural areas. That leads to our hospitals getting backed up as well as our care homes, because people are put into a bed in a nursing home that is there. That is a public cost, while domiciliary care workers are not getting paid properly. You have health, housing, access to services in general, carers and the health service. When I look at that situation, I see that there has been a marked progressive deterioration in the past eight, nine or 10 years. The situation has been exacerbated. The Rural Needs Act was supposed to look at those policy items and at least help to address them. If they are doing it after the event, that is nowhere near the way that it is supposed to be done. That leads me to say that rural is not an afterthought. The rest of us have to be there and to be represented. We have to look after the people whom we are elected to serve.

Those are the major shortcomings, as I see them, of a policy that should be central to government. The logic of that is that it sits with the Executive Office so that the policy permeates all other Departments and works its way through them to make sure that that is done, as other policies can be.

We have heard about the EU and the loss of funding, but there is another aspect that I will raise, if I may. I look ahead to the Climate Change Act 2022 and to our rural areas. Electric vehicles — one, they are cost-prohibitive, and, two, the charging points. That is just one thing when it comes to rural access to services and stuff, because people have to travel to get to their doctors. Another aspect relates to the just transition and how it works its way through, especially for our rural areas, because it permeates a multiplicity of factors that could be affected, be they economic development, education, access to services or whatever. You are the practitioners, and I am not anxious to lumber you with something else, Kate, but rural very much has to be factored into the just transition. It is not just about a just transition for agriculture, which is a pivotal part of it, but for rurality in general. One, you are probably going to assert what I said about the Rural Needs Act, but two is looking ahead to a just transition and how to move society ahead on that front.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I ask for reasonably succinct answers, if that is OK. There was a lot in that from Patsy.

Ms Clifford: For me, the Rural Needs Act definitely needs to find its teeth. It needs to be strengthened, but it also needs to be applied. It needs robust implementation. We cannot be the only people who are shouting all the time that the thing has been done retrospectively instead of ahead of time. We are doing an awful lot of work where we go to Departments and train staff in what rural looks like and how rural communities are configured. We call it the "beyond Belfast scenario", because things are slightly different when you get beyond Belfast. When you do not have a bus or a Glider at your doorstep, it is much more difficult. The Rural Needs Act got us to the table. I would not at any stage say that it was a bad thing. It is a great thing, because we can ring up officials and say, "What about rural?".

Ms Coyle: Yes, you can challenge back.

Ms Clifford: You can challenge back. The difficulty is, as with equality legislation and everything else, until the Act is tested or a judicial reviews is taken, it is really difficult to make it anything other than a "must do" or a "nice to have". It is about getting it to the next level where, like section 75, it cannot be ignored. That is where we would like it to go.

On the just transition, I only thing that I will say to you is that I am definitely not an expert on that area of work, but I also look at an over-reliance on rural communities to be the providers of green energy. I look at the stress that that cause in many rural areas. In some areas, it is really well embraced; in other areas, it has been done to communities. It has been imposed on communities, and we find ourselves sitting in really difficult situations in a membership-based organisation where some of our communities are looking to be the providers of green energy and the others are opposing the implementation of green energy.

I have a testimonial from a group who came to a mental health project that we were running. They said that the biggest cause of stress in their community was the division of the tension coming from external investors coming into their community and imposing on them. That has caused division and tension in the community, which has caused mental ill health in that community. That is not a leap; that is the reality.

People have to live and work beside one another. Some are for, and some are against. Where it has been imposed on communities, it has not been thought about. Our urban centres benefit massively from green technology, but our local communities do not. There is something around that just transition. To my shame, I live in a household of four heavy diesel vehicles. There is no choice in a rural area. We have looked at EVs. The cost of it is prohibitive. We are a two-income household. There is no way I could change to an electric vehicle.

Ms Canavan: Can I just come in quickly on that? I know that you are tight for time. Rural development, as a remit, can address some of those issues. You are talking about charging points there. We have a tremendous community halls infrastructure across Northern Ireland. There is every hall that you can think of: church halls, Orange halls, GAA facilities, whatever. There needs to be more work done with them on energy efficiency and making their buildings more energy cost-effective. We did a piece of research with them, and energy efficiency is a big issue for community buildings. Making community buildings more energy-efficient and putting charging points in local community facilities has happened across the South, so there are definitely things that we can do locally to make things better, but we need that rural development remit to be able to do it. That is just to highlight that we have such a wonderful infrastructure there. If we can look at solutions within the existing infrastructure, can we make those buildings more energy-efficient? Can we put in charging points? Can we make them exemplars of good action for climate change or whatever? Those are the sorts of things that rural development can do, and those are the things that we should look at.

Ms Coyle: On the rural needs, it needs more than us challenging it. We work in our other community and voluntary sector organisations with their policy people and say, "When you are responding, will you say...?". We do a lot of that. We need all of you, the Assembly, to challenge back and say, "I am not seeing rural in here. Where is it? If we are talking about regional balance, that includes rural. Where is it?". To be honest, we know that they listen less to us, as a community and voluntary sector, than they might listen to all of you, so I say that we all need to be at it.

Ms Canavan: Flex your muscle.

Ms Coyle: I am not suggesting that you are not at it; I am just saying that it takes more than just us challenging back, because they kind of go, "Och, they are always complaining."

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I have literally a maximum of 20 minutes for the next five members, if that is OK. I am sorry, guys. Try to do better than this, because it is not fair to come in late and get a bit of a shorter time. I am up to 20 minutes late. That is OK.

Mr Irwin: I thank you all for your presentation. You have made your case well. I am a farmer, and I live in the country. Forgive me asking this question. Do you all work together as groups? You have identified the issues today, but is there not a need to identify the issues and highlight the main issues? If you have hundreds of issues, you get no issues sorted. If you could identify the main issues together, it would be positive. That is important. Do you not see a need for that?

Ms Coyle: I think that we do. We work really hard together, William, basically because we are all under-resourced. We all definitely do not have time to do everything. Even before coming here today, we go, "Right, what are you saying? Right, well...", to get the value out of what we do together. The difficulty is that there are so many issues. Our members do not cherry-pick the issues that they bring to us, so we end up having to do a lot. I hear you, however: if we are looking at a new rural policy and framework, we will have to start prioritising and deciding what our key things are, what is short-term, medium-term and long-term and who will do what. That is why we need a policy.

Ms Clifford: When Teresa was here last week, she talked about having the evidence base and the policy. It would be really helpful to have that; it would save a lot of time. We do a lot of collaboration and joint working right across. We tend to be the people who do the policy stuff with government and sit at those tables, as Louise and Ciara do for women's issues. We all have our niche when it comes to where we work, and we all have a certain level of expertise. There is stuff that I will not touch, because we have no knowledge of it, but we will input into thinking rural and how that will have an impact. We call on a group of associates who come in and help, but that all costs money and takes time and coordination. It would be brilliant, if we were not in survival mode, to think strategically about how we could collaborate better, but, being in survival mode, it has just been about getting from one year to the next. That is the real difficulty.

Mr Irwin: I just think that it is important to identify those issues together.

Ms Clifford: Absolutely.

Mr Blair: As well as thanking the people who presented, Chair, it would be useful to reassure them that this was a high priority when we had our strategic workshop and were planning for the year. It was right up there when we were considering what the rural affairs bit of DAERA does, how it does it and for whom. We should maybe also reassure people that we could commit to doing this again in the shorter-to-medium term in order to review how the policy proposals, if they come forward, have been accepted and achieved. We should make the commitment today that it will not be a once-in-a-term thing for the Assembly but a regular briefing session.

If I may, I want to ask you to reflect on the word "development". It is a very wide term. It could mean development of property, development of infrastructure or development of people. The conversation may need to move from one word to a phraseology that would better reflect the range of reactions and processes that are necessary and reflect the fact that this is about planning, policy and processes to deliver change. On that basis, DFC covers housing, and Infrastructure covers roads and transport. We cannot have those conversations without bringing in the Housing Executive and Translink, for example, as external agencies; DAERA, of course, provides the policy. You referred to that, but, if you can, will you give us a concise reflection of how those things currently fit together? I guess the answer will be, "Not very well".

I want to bring in councils as well. I do that on a recurring basis at this Committee. Councils have a community planning process. Councils have policing and community safety partnerships (PCSPs) that should be able to do something on violence against women and girls. I had a stark reminder, which I will own up to, during COVID, when people were out walking more. I was really shocked by the number of calls from women who were afraid to walk on the roads around their home. Men and others talked about street lighting and various things, but I was shocked by the number of women who reflected to me that they were afraid when they heard a car slow down while they were walking on the roads around their home. Are PCSPs working on that? Could they do it better? Could the councils' community planning fit better with the interdepartmental work that we are talking about here? Does all that make sense? Can you give us a reaction to that?

Ms Coyle: We are a small region, but we seem to have managed to silo all kinds of things. We work well on things individually, but it is about how we knit it all together: working with local government, regional government, the UK Government and our partners in the Republic — all that east-west, North/South stuff. We are not knitting it all together to make sure that there is no duplication and that best practice is shared, replicated and mainstreamed, as Kate said. We are not doing any of that well.

You are all in the Assembly, and you will know that Departments are not talking to each other — even within the Departments, never mind across them. There are, obviously, good examples of where it is working well but, generally speaking, it is not. Rural people are definitely not benefiting from that approach. We need to get better at it.

Ms Canavan: I will sound like a broken record, but that is what rural development is. It is about that collaboration. I think that sometimes people get rural development, as the function, mixed up with the rural development programme as the funding. Rural development as a function is about collaboration, coordination and working across government. It is about bringing the community with you. It is about working with the community at a local level, raising those issues within and across central government. That is why rural development did so well in the 1990s: councils were engaging, and there was a community bottom-up approach — the LEADER approach, if you want to call it that — but DARD/DANI, as it was then, was the rural area coordinator, coordinating across government.

The rural development programme is a vital component, and we need to make sure that we do not lose sight of funding for rural development. The rural development funding is different from a rural development function, and it is the function of rural development that is diminishing completely. If DAERA is telling us that it has no remit for that, who has? Who has the remit for coordinating all of those Departments along with councils and communities? That is the bit that we need to get back into some statutory legislation. Mr McAleer mentioned the statutory remit for TRPSI: if you have the statutory remit for rural development, those functions of being able to deliver for rural will fall within that. At the moment, however, we do not have that: we have no remit for rural development.

Ms Clifford: It would be wrong to sit here today and say that community planning is working, because it is not. We know that from our members. There are some shining lights and some really good examples, particularly in rural areas, but there is inconsistency across all the councils in how it is being applied, how it is being done and what its functionality is. In some areas there is a lot of political interference, and in others there is less political interference and more community involvement. It is not the LEADER approach: the LEADER approach was about putting people on an equal footing. I mean "political" with a small p, not just a big P. There are issues around community planning because, in places, it is not fit for purpose. In places, some of the statutory agencies are not turning up, and who is turning up is inconsistent. We are getting complaints from people who are consistently turning up as volunteers to sit on community planning partnerships and doing an awful lot of hard work, but they have no idea who is going to turn up at the table opposite them, and no one is being called to account on that. As an aspiration, community planning is phenomenal, but it is not being applied consistently.

Mr Blair: Or delivered. I asked that question deliberately, Kate, because I expected a mixed answer.

Ms Canavan: There is no statutory rural partner for community planning, because there is no statutory remit.

Mr Blair: That sums up where we need to go on this, Chair. It is about putting the frameworks beside the funding. May I ask a specific question to highlight where there are differences?

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Quickly, please.

Mr Blair: In the real world, I know about the discussion around housing provision, and I have people from rural areas. Everybody around the table has a substantial rural constituency, but, often, there will be opposition to housing developments in rural areas, particularly social housing developments. Often, that opposition comes from elected reps. Is there something that you can think of that we could do better to respond to that resistance and opposition to such proposals, so that the need outweighs the opposition in consideration by all of us as a collective? Does that make sense?

Ms Clifford: We worked with the previous Minister for Communities on a paper around the barriers to social housing development in rural communities. That paper should be published. It is ready; the research was done. It does not address the issue of Nimbyism, and nor does it address the issue of people not wanting social housing in their area. What we see across the UK — across England — in rural areas is the reuse of houses and the redevelopment of town centres.

From my office in Cookstown, I can see 15 derelict houses. In a housing crisis, why are those houses not being repurposed?

Mr Blair: It is the town centre stuff.

Ms Clifford: They are accessible, affordable homes that are being held for tax or whatever reasons and let go to rack and ruin. A house directly opposite our front door has had nobody in it since I turned up at RCN in 2009. It is a brand new house. The windows have been open for the past number of years, and no one is in it. When I look at those homes and see that there is housing available in town centres and communities, I wonder why we do not have a compulsory purchase order stage and all that. That would get us away from the urban-based, large housing developments of social housing, which is what people object to, and it would allow us to intersperse people. In rural areas, we always lived cheek by jowl — carpenter, field worker, doctor —

Mr Blair: Social and private.

Ms Clifford: — and were socially mixed. That is what rural communities are made of, and it is how we should live.

Ms Coyle: As with anything, you have to bring people with you.

Ms Clifford: Absolutely.

Ms Coyle: People need to know why you are building, whom you are building for and what will happen. It goes back to the LEADER bottom-up approach.

Ms Canavan: Rural development.

Ms Coyle: If people feel that it is being put on them, they will naturally be resistant. As humans, we are naturally resistant to change, even if it is good for us. It is about the talking process.

Mr Blair: There is a lot of work to be done.

Ms Coyle: Often, it takes so long to get the planning in place. Then, when people get the planning stuff in the post, they panic. Conversations need to happen before that.

Mr Blair: Thank you, all.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Nicola, I think I know where you are going.

Miss Brogan: I am sure that you do; I got that nod.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I did not mention it.

Miss Brogan: Thank you, Robbie.

Thanks, folks, for your presentation. It is really good to be in Cookstown this morning.

From your presentations, we see that there are challenges across loads of issues. I will touch on just a couple of them. It is clear to me that you are passionate about this and that you do incredible work. We appreciate your doing that and coming in to share it with us.

You talked about putting TRPSI on a statutory footing — that makes complete sense — and about multi-year budgets. Those would benefit organisations, and they would benefit Departments and the Executive. We previously pushed for them, we are pushing for them again, and, hopefully, we will see a multi-year Budget in the next year or so.

As an MLA for West Tyrone, a rural area, I hear about a lot of the issues. I am from a rural area. I understand some of the challenges, but we do not all face them. I was in a privileged position. We have to recognise, when we talk about the poverty statistics, that not everyone experiences that. It is important to highlight it and to understand that there are people in dire straits.

The issue that I hear about most is access to GP services, dental services and other healthcare things such as, as Patsy outlined, care in the home. A lot of it is due to staff recruitment and retention issues. In Dromore, Trillick and Fintona, which are in the area that I represent, contracts for GP services had to be handed back to the trust because they could not recruit GPs to take over those contracts. Often, that is because people train in Belfast and end up staying there. We talked about Derry and Belfast, with the Magee campus trying to train medics in Derry, which is good, but we have to look at other areas. That goes back to your point about regional balance. I have rushed through all that, but that is where my head is at with it.

Ciara, I want to touch on childcare, which I have worked on for a long time. I chair the all-party group on early education and childcare. We have seen some progress. We have been pushing for a childcare strategy for a long time, and £25 million was invested this year, which is definitely welcome, but people in rural areas face specific challenges with childcare that are sometimes overlooked. We rely a lot more on childminders than people in other areas do, which brings challenges. I have tried to bring childminders along to that forum to have their voices heard, because their needs are different. The main challenge for people in rural areas is access to childcare and its affordability. That involves the Department for the Economy, because it is about upskilling people so that we can get more childcare providers on board. Will you elaborate on the challenges that rural people face when it comes to childcare?

Ms Forsythe: As you said, it is about finding childcare that is close by. For example, I know a woman who travels for an hour in the opposite direction from her work to go to a childminder because she could not get anybody closer. Childminders can put their rates up, they may be off sick, and you have to pay their holiday pay because they are self-employed. While, with crèches, you may get a two-week break or pay half, you pay a full rate for a childminder. You have to provide lunches and snacks for the kids. However, childminders are massively needed. Everyone is desperate for some kind of care. There are also older children and adults with severe disabilities who need care, and it is just non-existent. There is no break for parents. We are human; we all need a break. Childcare needs to be in a reasonable location compared to where you live or work. As you said, it is about the access to and cost of childcare. There are women who say, "I do not want to leave my kids with just anyone just because they are nearby".

Miss Brogan: Exactly.

Ms Forsythe: There are babies, and it is important that we know who they are with. We need to know that the childminder is regulated. There are people who are childminding but are not regulated because of the lengthy process involved. How to make that quicker should be looked at, and more reviews should be put in place, so that people can get on to the register. Childminders have to register for the 20% tax-free childcare. A lot of childminders will not register, and then parents are stuck. Maybe it would help if that process were easier as well.

Miss Brogan: There is a lot of work to be done on that, Ciara. You are right.

Ms Coyle: When we talk about affordable childcare, we always talk about the parents. However, the remuneration for childcare providers does not make childcare an attractive job or employment. Although we always say childcare is expensive, it is also expensive to run and deliver, so childcare providers do not make a lot of money. We need to make it a more attractive job. Going back to what Patsy said about it being expensive for domiciliary care workers to get to their work, it is the same for childcare providers. We need quality provision. It is subsidised almost everywhere else, and it is a disgrace that we have waited this long. That might be the third iteration of a childcare strategy that I have worked on since I started, and we still do not have one. While what is happening is welcome, it is nowhere near what is needed to provide any kind of a solution.

Ms Clifford: We are anti-poverty campaigners — that is our job. We are pushing for an anti-poverty strategy for Northern Ireland. When we have care providers that pay the minimum wage but less than the living wage, we perpetuate cycles of poverty. There are people who are employed full-time, but, because they live in a rural area and have to pay for childcare and pay whatever to access work, they bring in less than they need to live on. They are working — they are economically active — but their rate of pay is so low. Pay is precarious in rural areas, because there is intermittent employment. All those issues predicate more poverty in rural areas. That is a real difficulty for us. We have people who work in service industries: they work in hotels and in tourism. That is intermittent, seasonal employment — it is not all year round — but, irrespective, they pay for a childcare place for the full year. Again, we are back to the question of how things join up. How do we acknowledge that zero-hours contracts are not working for anybody? They do not service anybody. They do not service people's mental health and well-being. Precarious employment does not work.

Ms Canavan: I have a quick comment about community solutions. Again, we need a rural development remit and programme. There are community solutions for childcare. Look at the Eskra centre. Look at the community buildings that have been transformed for community childcare. There are community solutions for domiciliary care. Years ago, there was the ambulatory care experience (ACE) scheme, which kept people in their homes. There are loads of support and employment programmes in the South that do not have equivalents in Northern Ireland. It is about how we find community solutions. Social enterprise has a big role to play; it can provide a good wage for people. All of that sits under rural development. If we do not have a rural development remit, policy and programme, none of those things will happen.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Will you stop going on about a rural development remit? [Laughter.]

My ears are sore.

Ms Canavan: I have always said that, before I go, there will be a rural development remit.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): You have got it in again. If we had one of those word bubbles up today — [Laughter.]

Ms Canavan: As long as you get the message.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I am only joking. It is 12 o'clock, Nicola. I have Áine and Tom on the list still to speak.

Miss Brogan: I will be quick. There are so many topics that I want to discuss, especially violence against women and girls. One of the biggest issues there is the housing crisis. Often, women who want to leave the house have nowhere to go. What is their solution?

Finally, Kate, you mentioned financial services. I also sit on the Finance Committee, and we are doing an inquiry into financial and banking services. You are both on the list of stakeholders to discuss that.

Ms Clifford: At the round-table, yes.

Miss Brogan: Yes. We will be able to have a discussion about that, because it affects rural areas more than others. We look forward to that. Thank you, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Obviously, "finally" is a Tyrone thing, because there were two "finallys" there. [Laughter.]

Ms Coyle: We will take no disparaging comments about Tyrone.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Especially when we are in Tyrone.

Ms Á Murphy: Thank you, folks, for coming in to brief us. From my point of view, you are speaking to the converted. I see it and live it every day in County Fermanagh. I live in south-east Fermanagh. I am 25 minutes from Clones, and I see the disparity between North and South, especially when I travel between Fermanagh and Belfast.

Kate, you touched on all the issues, including transport. Jason Donaghy of Fermanagh Community Transport has raised issues with us. Never mind public transport in Fermanagh, Jason and the team in Fermanagh Community Transport are having to pick up the pieces. Fermanagh Community Transport is seriously underfunded and is not on a statutory footing.

I do not know where to start with health, whether it is the SWAH or GP services. My GP practice has over 30,000 patients, making it one of the biggest practices, if not the biggest practice, in the North. All of its catchment area is rural. We had a women's health clinic in that practice. It ceased, I think, a year ago and has not been replaced. The trust says that that is due to funding. We could get into, as Nicola did, the issue of dentists. We can talk about domiciliary care packages. The trust says that it is more costly to have carers out in rural communities, so it tries to pool as many care packages as possible with each of its carers who are out on the road.

Banking services is another big issue. We literally do not have a bank in an entire district electoral area (DEA) in County Fermanagh — not one bank. Lisnaskea, where I live, is the second largest town in the county, but it has no bank. The last bank left in May this year.

I want to touch on home to school transport. It is an issue that I have been dealing with for constituents over the past two to three years, specifically in respect of the home to school transport policy. I am still going through the Education Authority (EA). From what I can see, there is absolutely no cognisance of the nature of rural roads. It may be — I could be wrong — that the people making the decisions do not understand how dangerous rural roads are. I had the EA tell me last week that it expects four- to 11-year-olds to be left off unattended at a bus stop on the side of a rural road. It is bananas stuff. That is before I get on to rural proofing and the state of rural roads. I could go on.

I want to ask about the red tape and bureaucracy that you see, day in, day out, week in, week out, with the Department or any other Department. How could Departments cut down on that?

Ms Clifford: We are back to demonstration projects, with really good rural development. I have no love for the Western Health and Social Care Trust and what is happening with rural issues. I look at the Northern Health and Social Care Trust, and I see how it has taken rural-proofing really seriously. We have developed a rural health toolkit, and the Northern Trust invested in us to go to Rathlin Island, which is the most rural part of Northern Ireland because it is cut off by water, to look at how to find solutions out there, given the Rathlin policy and the Rural Needs Act. The Northern Trust is looking at that proactively. The Western Trust represents the most rural region, yet it still configures services with an urban bias..

Ms Á Murphy: It is Derry-centric; that is what it is.

Ms Clifford: I am from Derry, so I will say nothing. I can see that there is a thing about protecting a regional hospital in the north-west, and I understand why it is doing that, but services more broadly have slowly been taken away. We have women who give birth and get no visits from health visitors. Health visitors have sat with us and said, "I cannot go out to mammies in those first three or four weeks any more". If a woman has a postnatal episode or is experiencing coercive control, that is often picked up in those early visits.

For me, it is about what works and how we demonstrate that it works. We know that rural transport works. In parts of rural England, domiciliary care issues have been addressed by procuring services locally: not by going to a big provider but by going to a local provider and saying, "Could you step up nine carers, train them and put them out in the local community? Could you work that system?". They make the providers independently employed and give them an area to cover. It is then those providers' job to cover the people who are unwell. They are of the community and for the community. It is less likely that those carers will not turn up due to bad weather, because they do not have to travel far.

I keep telling this story. I have a daughter who worked as a carer during COVID. She could have been working anywhere from Maghera to Whiteabbey, and she was not paid for travelling the distance between those places. If it were not for the fact that she was training to be a medic, she would not have taken that job. It was an absolute nightmare of a job, given the abuse that she got. She got the COVID vaccine and was sick. That night, in the space of an hour, she received 21 phone calls asking her to go to work. I was saying, "She physically can't. She's unwell. She took a reaction to the vaccine". She was unwell, but she was badgered all evening. I was thinking, "If this is how you treat your staff, it is no wonder that people are leaving in droves".

My daughter had an option because she did not need to work, but that is happening across rural Northern Ireland. Why would you want to go to darkest Moneyneena, Belleek or Lisnaskea? That is a different prospect to being in Belfast, Derry or Lurgan, where there are fewer challenges. It is about finding local solutions and not looking at global procurement of contracts as the only way to get services, and then going for the lowest common denominator. If we value the caring services, we should pay people a decent wage to do that work.

Ms Coyle: Sometimes a problem may sound the same, but the solution in the rural area may be very different. That is constantly missing from policymaking. There is no awareness that a different solution is needed and not a lot of will to have one, because it might take longer and you have to go to each community. What works in Belleek may not work in Clonoe, so you have to do the hard yards. That takes time and may take more money, and nobody is interested in that.

Ms Canavan: That was the beauty of the community-led local development of the LEADER approach, which was bottom-up and engaged communities to find their own solutions. Those solutions were different for different areas. That is why we need rural development.

Ms Coyle: Did you hear that? You got that last bit? [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): The next time I come to Tyrone, I am telling you —.

Mr T Buchanan: Thank you for giving [Inaudible.] [Laughter.]

Folks, I wanted to come in on the great challenges in rural communities. Having been born and bred in a rural community and living in one, I empathise with all that you said about all the challenges out there.

Some years ago, the rural-proofing policy was brought forward. When we look at what is happening in rural communities, we see that great programmes have been delivered but that it is not possible to progress them or build upon them; we see banks, post offices and surgeries closing; and we see other problems in health. We see all that you have mentioned; I will not go through the whole thing again. Do you think that the rural-proofing policy is working and delivering as it ought to? Could something else be done to strengthen it and ensure that it delivers? I believe that, if the rural-proofing policy were delivering as it ought to and doing the work that it is meant to, we would not be in the situation that we are. I think that, if all those things were to be rural-proofed as they ought to be, we would not have this situation.

Ms Coyle: Absolutely. That is the crux of it. Whilst there is a Rural Needs Act and a duty to take account of rural needs, the intentionality rarely pans out in how it is actually done. Off the top of my head, I could probably list 10 bad examples of rural needs analysis of policy; I definitely could not give you 10 good examples. I do not know how the rest of you feel about that. I do not want to say that it is because of people's lack of capacity, but I think there is a lack of true understanding of what we are talking about when we say, "Take account of rural need". Often, it is said, "This will have an equal impact. This is good for everybody". That is just not OK.

I am happy to go on record as saying that the draft Programme for Government's approach to rural needs assessment is an absolute disgrace. It is a disservice to every rural citizen to tell them, "Do you know what? When we get this all figured out, we will think about you afterwards". That is actually in breach of what it is supposed to do. That is the message right from the top and from the thing that underpins everything that happens — our Programme for Government. That is the attitude to rural proofing. I feel strongly about it. That is the key policy that underpins everything that happens in the Assembly, and that is the attitude that was taken to doing a rural needs assessment. I know the pressures in getting a Programme for Government out, and sometimes that is where it falls down: people are trying to do consultations too quickly. In a lot of cases, response times have dropped from 12 weeks to eight weeks. We had one that said, "If you could get it in in four weeks, that would be even better". I understand that, when you are working in short mandates, there are problems in trying to make things happen, but, honestly, doing it badly and quickly is not the answer. You need to do it adequately as a minimum and really well if you are to bring about any change.

Ms Clifford: I also think that, with rural proofing, there is a presumption that there is nothing in place and that there is no infrastructure. Often, asset-based community development is the starting point of our work. We start with what people have. As Teresa mentioned, we have really good community groups. We have really good community halls. We have brilliant infrastructure. We have strong, consolidated communities. That was proven time and again during COVID. When Departments were struggling to step up hot food responses, our local Spar shops, our local GAA clubs and the Orange Order pulled together and got hot meals delivered to the people in need, who would normally have turned up at the luncheon club. They got food to people rather than people to food. They reversed those systems and stepped it up really quickly.

Sometimes, rural proofing comes from a perspective of, "There is nothing out there. We would have to put everything in place", instead of from doing an environmental scan and asking, "What is already there? What assets are already in that community? How can we build on those?". Start with the people and the asset and build on that, as opposed to thinking that something brand new needs to be created, which puts everybody on the back foot and has people saying, "It will cost too much. We will not do that". It is about creative and innovative thinking.

We are blessed to live where we live. We are blessed to have the communities, the assets and the resources that we have. We know that there is not enough money in government, but, by God, rural people are full of ingenuity and innovation. They are cracking this stuff day and daily. They just want to have a conversation with the people who drive services and be able to say, "Maybe we could do it slightly differently here, because that is how it would work."

GP surgeries are closing in towns as well as in villages. When they close in a town, there is an alternative, which might be A&E. The difficulty is that, if they close in rural areas, there is no alternative; there is no other place for people to go. We need to find solutions. That will take collective thinking. Nobody is going to crack that on their own. Going back to the LEADER approach, it is about getting people around a table, innovating together, thinking about it together and solving problems together. We do not expect government to solve every problem. We have resources in communities: let us utilise them in a rural development framework.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you. I have to end it there. I have lots more stuff that I wanted to talk about, and I am sure that Tom could flesh that out.

Ms Clifford: You should do a Christmas lunch. [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): If you hang about, there will be a few more conversations.

I have lots of other stuff written down that I wanted to mention, but I just cannot. Thank you for your really substantive contribution today. We are genuinely listening. As John pointed out, we would love to revisit this issue at least once and maybe more than that, especially as the Department works up its rural policy unit. We will ensure that a strong voice goes back on it. Thank you so much.