Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I welcome the following representatives from rural support networks (RSNs): Ms Mary T Conway from the Omagh Forum for Rural Associations; Mr Nicholas McCrickard from the County Down Rural Community Network (RCN); and Ms Diane Ewart from the TADA Rural Support Network. I invite you to make your presentations. As with the previous session, we will pitch it at five to 10 minutes — this is obviously not what happened — but, to be fair to you guys, take whatever it takes. We will take questions from members when you have finished.

Mary, are you up first? It does not matter; it is up to you guys.

Ms Mary T Conway (Omagh Forum for Rural Associations): Nicholas will start.

Mr Nicholas McCrickard (County Down Rural Community Network): Chairman and MLAs, thank you very much. We really appreciate your time today. I am delighted to be here. We thought that we were going to be cut short, so we are very grateful for the additional time. You have heard this morning from our colleagues in the regional bodies: the Northern Ireland Rural Women's Network (NIRWN), the Rural Community Network (RCN) and Rural Action. They are all colleagues of ours. We are your eyes and ears on the ground. We are the rural support networks, and we cover all of Northern Ireland. We have been going for a long time. We had a few slides — they are in the system, if you want to have a look at them — but we will talk without slides, off the top of our heads. We have put on your desks a copy of the brochure that we shared at the Long Gallery a couple of weeks ago. It was great to see so many of you at that event. We will talk to some of the data that is in the brochure, but I will give a quick summary of the local rural support networks — the brand that we give ourselves.

We have a unique rural, community-based infrastructure. There are eight rural support networks, and the three of us are here to represent those eight. We all have been going since the 1990s; in fact, some have been going since the early 1990s. We are all independent charities. Our primary aim is to support local, small community organisations in sustaining their local rural community, however that might be. Rural community groups cover a wide range of subjects. I suppose that we are the infrastructure. There is a membership of up on 3,000 rural community groups in the eight rural support networks. DAERA has been responsible for supporting a lot of that work since the late 1980s and early 1990s. We thank DAERA for its long and consistent support of us, as networks, and our member groups.

We have strong links to the councils — I was listening to some of the comments from William and others — and Departments. Importantly, we see ourselves as the conduit between the local volunteers and small community groups, up into government, through councils and up into central government, but we are also giving you, as decision makers, the opportunities to feed down into local groups. We are your conduit between the two. We have been collaborating and acting as one voice, using a place-based approach. Kate Clifford mentioned that in the earlier session. We have lots of assets. A lot of these things have been mentioned, so I will try not to repeat too much. I want to mention the assets that we have from a very local community infrastructure base. This morning, a colleague in another place mentioned the fact that the community ownership fund, which is a fund from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in Britain was hugely oversubscribed. I see that as more evidence that we have lots of good assets, such as old police stations and schoolhouses, or whatever they happen to be, that local people want to restore. With a bit of investment, we could do a lot more, and we could have more services based in those rural assets. We want to come back to a few of those things.

To summarise, we are your eyes and ears on the ground. As we told Members in the Long Gallery last week, we have been collaborating with you and with local and central government for over 30 years, putting policy into action. We are also part of some of the other structures that were mentioned this morning: I am chair of Newry, Mourne and Down community planning partnership (CPP), for example. As local rural support networks, we and our staff are involved in sitting on the partnerships and trying to make sense of government for the local volunteer. We also get involved in all of the usual regional consultations, but we lean on our colleagues in the RCN and others to do a lot of the regional stuff. Our thing is to go out locally. There are examples of where we have worked with government in the past. We developed this unique community with rural infrastructure organically. We did not force it. People and groups get together, and we are adding groups all the time. The likes of men's sheds, community allotments — those sorts of groups — join. I call that "the growing part" of our industry — it is literally growing, in more ways than one. I will try not to say it too often, Robbie, but we have been involved in delivering the rural development programmes of the past 40 years, along with Teresa Canavan and the other guys.

We were key players in peace-building through various EU PEACE programmes, and we are still involved in that. We delivered the maximising access to services, grants and benefits in rural areas (MARA) programme — Mary T will talk more about that, so I will not say too much about it — and many other regional programmes, including Warm, Well and Connected, which was an attempt by DFC and DAERA to minimise the suffering of people during COVID. We were at the heart of delivering that, and 30,000 people benefited directly from that programme.

What are we doing today? There is loads of current collaboration. We are involved in everything from the Charity Commission to the stakeholder engagement forum and the joint voluntary and community sector forum for Northern Ireland. Of course, we deliver micro-grants at a local level, and we are delighted that the Minister launched those again in the Long Gallery a couple of weeks ago. This is a unique year. We have two lots of micro-grants and a stunning number of applicants. You know the numbers: DAERA has paid out over 850 grants in just the last number of weeks, and bang: we are straight into starting a new programme and already taking loads of applications. That is great to see, and all you guys in all your constituency offices are clearly pushing this, because it is not slowing down.

As well as micro-grants, we are a big part of the tackling rural poverty and social isolation framework (TRPSI), which is an important element in keeping this infrastructure whole. I would certainly support your proposal, Declan, to provide statutory protection for that. In so many ways, it is the glue that is connecting all the other Departments in making rural important. As I said, we are involved in community planning partnerships. We deliver, in a lot of cases, hardship funds for DFC, the Public Health Agency (PHA) and emergency relief initiatives for Bryson and others. We are collaborating in DFC's test and learn programmes in Aughnacloy and, to a lesser extent, in the Diamond area in the north-west. Mary T will talk about a couple of other examples.

I will hand over to Diane to take us through a couple of surveys that we did on need.

Ms Diane Ewart (TADA Rural Support Network): I will refer to the big leaflet that we gave to the Committee. As Nicholas said, the eight networks work together. We are in a good, strong position because, for over 30 years, we have built relationships with all the rural community groups and helped to develop them, so we know how important it is to identify the rural issues in areas.

We do collaborative surveys, and we did two this year. We pulled together the results, and I refer you to the major issues for rural communities. We had over 1,700 responses, and the results show that the impact of the work of the RSNs has been overwhelmingly excellent or very good. The groups that responded deliver daily on a wide range of issues. Almost 80% of them have fewer than 20 volunteers. Most communities require basic funding for programmes and running costs. Most need ongoing support for capacity training, fundraising and governance issues. We identified the following major issues for rural dwellers: 86% mentioned mental health; 67% poverty; 58% physical infrastructure, 51% physical health; 46% transport and 44% housing. We work together and talk every day. We have built up relationships over 30 years. We meet about three times a month, and we meet DAERA once a month. That is how close we are. We identify the issues and then try to get solutions.

To address mental and physical health, we provide a wide range of projects in rural communities. I will give you an example of one project that had a bid. We received a budget from the PHA to develop a collaborative video project to reflect mental health. It was titled 'Take 5 steps to wellbeing'. We reached out to 10 of our rural community groups and produced a video showing each Communities in Action group, what they do and how, at first hand, the five ways to well-being themes are reflected in organisations. The leaflet promotes the 10 rural Communities in Action videos — two for each of the five themes — on the PHA five steps to well-being, and that project assisted in reaching out to rural people who are the most vulnerable, feeling lonely or isolated and struggling with mental health issues. The point about not being able to get to a GP was raised earlier, and that is why it is so important that they are connected to us.

You can see the different community groups that we used. I will not go into them. We used a unique QR code. If you put your phone on the QR code, you can watch the video. As I say, we built up the relationship with those communities, and we were delighted to be able to promote what they did. A lot of them got the micro-grant for equipment to enable them to do what is shown on the video. If you watch the video, you will see them kicking balls around and things. They got those from the micro-grants.

Mr McCrickard: Diane talked about answering the needs that we identified in the survey, and that covers mental health. Mary T will talk a bit more about poverty and learning from the old MARA project.

Ms Conway: My name is Mary T Conway, and I work in Omagh Forum. We cover the Fermanagh and Omagh area. We talked about the length of time that the organisations have been established and the fact that there are eight networks. I have just calculated that there are probably about 140 or 150 years' collective experience among the managers — that is only the managers — of each organisation. We have been in our roles for a long time. What attracts me to this job is the fact that we can have creative solutions to things. Teresa spoke earlier about the whole idea of developing from the ground up and rural development generating solutions. That is what we do, and that is why I love my job. I am sure that my colleagues will say the same, because they have been there for nearly 30 years. I am a baby; I have been here for only 21 years. It is brilliant to be involved in the local community sector. I am a volunteer locally, and I wear a lot of hats.

We are here today to speak about the local rural support networks. One of the projects that we are delivering looks at poverty. I will not go through in detail the slides that were sent to you, but they will show you — Kate mentioned it in the previous session — that, in Northern Ireland, 18% of individuals are living in relative poverty. In the Fermanagh and Omagh area, it is 20%. It is the same for children: the percentage of children living in poverty is higher in the Fermanagh and Omagh area. It is a huge issue in rural areas.

Food poverty is a particular problem. More and more people are going to food banks. They are even travelling outside their own geographical area, and they do that because of pride: people do not want to be seen walking into a food bank. That is increasing as time goes on. Rural areas are at greater risk of food poverty because, on average, items are more expensive and less available from rural outlets than in towns. Fermanagh and Omagh also has the third-highest average risk score for food poverty across Northern Ireland. Debt is also a huge problem, as is fuel poverty. As was stated earlier, we have less access to the gas network.

What did Fermanagh and Omagh District Council do as a response to that? Some council areas got funding through DFC and had social supermarkets. In the Fermanagh and Omagh area, there was a tender process. Reference was made to MARA, which was about maximising access in rural areas. It was a collaboration between DAERA and the Department of Health, and it basically meant that, across all of Northern Ireland — the rural support networks cover all of Northern Ireland — we had enablers who were going into people's houses, finding out what their needs were, bringing support and making sure that they knew about services, benefits and anything that could help their household. We were there to support them in that.

The programme that we deliver currently is the Western Response and Action on Poverty (WRAP) programme. It is like MARA. We go into people's houses. We did it last year, and it is beginning again now. We did it from November 2023 until March 2024, and it will be the same this time. We will go back into people's households.

We are using trusted partners, so we are working with organisations such as Sure Start, Women's Aid, Action for Children, the cancer charities and various others. Those organisations are seeing the issues that people have, and they recognise where food poverty exists. The WRAP programme provides food vouchers to those households over an eight-week period, and there are other services that we can speak to them about. If we go into a home and notice that it is very cold or that there is a patch of condensation on the wall, we have been trained to help the household to identify that and to take measures to deal with it. That might involve just setting the programmer in the house to make sure that they know how to use their heating system. We are also able to avail ourselves of the Bryson scheme, which is about fuel support. As well as the food vouchers that we give to people, we are able to provide fuel support through the Bryson scheme. Many of our other rural support networks are doing that as well.

The WRAP programme is a collaboration between seven different organisations. The Fermanagh Rural Community Network is the lead partner. We have the Oak Healthy Living Centre; the Arc Healthy Living Centre, the Courthouse, Kesh; the Omagh Forum and Lakeland Community Care. I hope that I did not miss anybody out. We talked earlier about what local councils are doing. Our council took an innovative approach to that. It has a draft anti-poverty strategy, which will be launched shortly.

All rural support networks have different approaches to things, and we avail ourselves of funding where we can. We are blessed, in that DAERA has supported us for so long, and that has given us the basis to be able to look for other funding for other projects. We see needs in areas, and we have the flexibility, as independent organisations, to meet those needs.

Mr McCrickard: I will finish up, folks. As you all know, Northern Ireland is a very complicated place when it comes to governance. We try to make sense of it for people. The example that I wanted to mention in Newry, Mourne and Down is that we lead on bringing all the larger charities and networks together. We also do that to a certain extent in Ards and North Down, in our other part of the world. The strategic stakeholder forum in Newry, Mourne and Down has led us into a whole lot of delegated responsibility from the Department for Communities, through the council and community planning, to deliver projects on the ground, and that covers many issues.

We also developed a south-east Mind Matters mental health programme, which Michelle and others might know about. I will not go into that, but it gave nearly 2,000 people quick access to counselling services when they were stuck in mental health dead ends, if you like. All of those programmes were funded by other sources, and that is what the rural support networks tend to do: we tend to bring together the resources from other places and turn them into practical programmes.

We are delighted that DAERA is working on the new rural policy. We are disappointed that the rural policy framework did not have more legs and could not move ahead. We all know the reasons for that, but we will not look back. We are looking forward to the new rural policy directing where we go from now on. We love the three-strand approach, which is a very simple, directed approach. Without tripping over everything that was said this morning, I will mention that the old rural development programme invested about £80 million a year. Last year, the equivalent was around £3 million, and, hopefully, with micro-grants and support from the Department and you, it should be up to about £6 million this year. However, we are falling behind the rest of the UK and Ireland in rural infrastructure and rural development. I will say no more than that.

I will turn to our future collaboration. Some of the guys mentioned climate change. Patsy and Áine talked about how to connect the whole thing up. The future rural policy has to take account of climate change. The rural support networks are already working up a wee project that is based on that. We get on our soapbox about using assets such as community halls, Orange halls, Gaelic clubs and all the other places and fitting them out with better, sustainable energy and charging points. If they are serious about electric vehicle (EV) roll-out, we have all the assets. We will also need our supermarkets, garages and all the rest to play their part. We are working on a wee project in that direction. In addition, we are working with you on the rural policy framework. We all fed into the joint consultation on the Programme for Government, and we are involved in the Aughnacloy test and learn. We are talking to DFC about other examples of how to roll that out.

We are delighted that the Minister has given us an opening. We are working with our colleagues, who gave evidence this morning, on an interim measure while we talk about the rural policy over the next year and a half or so. The Minister opened the door to us to put in a joint project proposal — we loosely call it "interim measures" — which will, we hope, benefit local groups in the next year to 18 months while we work on the rural policy. If there are any resources for that, we will try to get a proposal to you guys in the very near future.

Our mission today is to work with you guys proactively. We are your delivery agents on the ground. We can make things very practical, and, when the needs are identified, we can deliver. We get involved in the identification of needs, as Diane said. We work with our regional colleagues to look at the bigger data, but it is down to us to do the delivery.

Thank you for your time today. The final slide is a lovely photograph of the two Ministers — Mike Nesbitt and, of course, the AERA Minister — with the chairs of the eight networks. We are happy to take questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you so much for your presentation. We have that photograph in the packs, and I was looking at it on the screen.

You touched on something at the very end of your presentation that I wanted to ask the previous group about, but it is going to land with you guys. There is no doubt that this looks brilliant. The delivery looks really good. One of the concerns that I have about not just this but all of society is how we ensure that we are reaching those in absolute need. There is no doubt that poverty and disability affect some people, but they may still be connected to some of those fabulous groups. I get that you guys are a delivery unit, but you said that there is an element of assessing the need. What does that look like when it comes to ensuring that we are not missing people? I know that COVID probably gave us such an opportunity, but is something going on in that regard?

Ms Conway: The WRAP project that I am talking about covers the full council area. We are working with trusted partners, such as Women's Aid, Sure Start and even schools, which are at the coalface of what is happening. Schools provide such an opening, in that they see things happening, such as families who do not have money for lunch. Over and above that, and generically for the rural support networks, we work with community groups, which, in turn, meet the needs on the ground. It is about making sure that groups are inclusive and that they are looking after as many people as they can in their catchment area.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): The school one is interesting. It is really useful. Is that good practice somewhere, or is it standard across Northern Ireland's rural networks?

Mr McCrickard: We all do it slightly differently. We are all working with our local community groups to deliver on hardship funds. COVID taught us an awful lot. Not all of our groups are fully inclusive, and it is our job to keep reminding them not to be gatekeepers and not to close the door on other people.

Working with primary schools over the past four years, we have found that teachers and classroom assistants know who is in real dire straits. We had a small Sure Start fund recently in County Down and were able to give vouchers directly to families in schools. There are so many things. Every year, Norbrook in Newry gives out hundreds of food packages and toy hampers. It is up to us to deliver those to homes that are in dire need. We work in that respect through social work teams, Sure Start, Home-Start and other people to make sure that we identify the families who are genuinely in need. Somebody from the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul once told me, "You have to get past the greedy to get to the needy", which was, I thought, the best saying. There will always be a wee bit of abuse. I do not see it very often. People in need are living among us. As one of my colleagues said, we are in a fortunate position personally, because most of us are surviving well. However, there are people living among us who are not, and they are in dire straits due to all sorts of socio-economic factors.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): This is the last question from me, and I genuinely want a brief answer. Are there any examples of work that has taken place specifically for looked-after children? They are a vulnerable group, and there are more children in care than ever.

Ms Conway: We work with Action for Children quite a bit. Our area has family support hubs in Omagh and Enniskillen. They are for families who might have self-reported to Action for Children. It is a social work team, so it provides quite a bit of support for looked-after children. That is the one that we have. It is involved with our WRAP programme. We might go out to people who have left care, are in their teenage years and are starting their own journey as a family. They need every wee bit of support that they can get. We have some linkages with that group.

Mr McCrickard: Most of us are involved with the family support hubs. Those are health structures that are under the local trusts. Sometimes, we are, if you like, the service that might be needed. A social worker or somebody in Action for Children, Home-Start or Sure Start might identify a looked-after child, and, if we can bring support for that family or child through a local community group, that is our role.

Mr McAleer: Thank you for your presentation. I took the opportunity to read it and the notes, so I have a good knowledge of the great work that you do on the ground. With my community hat on, I remember that, after COVID, through the Omagh Forum for Rural Associations, the community health van came out to my local community. That can bring great benefits for hard-to-reach groups like farmers and those in isolated communities.

You receive core funding through the Department's tackling rural poverty and social isolation programme. Obviously, it is not a multi-annual budget, and it has not been baselined or given statutory protection. Will you explain how that impacts on you as an organisation in what you deliver?

Ms Conway: We do not have enough money to deliver our services. Across the board, I think that it would be agreed that all the rural support networks have to look for funding elsewhere to enable us to carry on our work. The support work that we are talking to you about is community development. All our organisations have branched out into different things. For example, we have a healthy living network, and we got funding from the lottery from that. We have had to avail ourselves of the different iterations of PEACE funds and various other funding pots to support the work that we do. We would probably all say that we are not funded completely for the work that we do.

Mr McCrickard: Even though we do all that other stuff, the "core funding", as you called it, is not officially a core fund at all, but it feels like it is because it has been there for so long. DAERA has supported the rural support networks for over 25 years, perhaps 27 years. We can nearly rely on it, because it is there, and that allows us to leverage so much more resource for rural communities. Your bit of money has an add-on effect. Through us, the added value is huge.

You asked about the effect on us. For years, we worked on an annual budget. Year after year, we have a standard protected notice letter that goes out to all our staff, including us. Our chair has to write that letter to us. In the past couple of sessions, there was three-year funding, which was brilliant. That was through a tender process. It was open to competitive tender from across the world, in theory. We were lucky enough that most of us were successful. Some networks dropped off and were lost, though they have come back into the fold in recent years.

Funding is uncertain and inconsistent. Somebody said that they would not advise their daughter or son to join the community sector. I disagree with that. Working in the community sector is a great job, but trying to keep our staff is stressful. As managers, our role is to try to keep our staff employed in a consistent way that is commensurate with the professional qualifications that many of them have in order to be able to help our members.

Sometimes the stress of chasing funding can be too much for people, and they jump ship to the public sector, which is a much more stable environment to work and live in.

Mr McAleer: Thank you. This is my last question. What one or two significant policy or legislative changes would you like to see made for the benefit of the organisation and the great work that you do?

Mr McCrickard: The strands of the framework that is being proposed can fit if we do it right: if we support the infrastructure, the people and the area-based work, and get that written into legislation. We need to protect Department rural funding even if it is shifted. We are concerned that there might be a shift of funding from DAERA to DFC to support the infrastructure that we are part of. We do not mind that — we are up for the challenge — but we need DAERA to, as you say, Declan, ring-fence or statutorily protect investment in rural areas, or we will be lost in the big urban noise that is out there. Somebody mentioned that there are probably in the region of 60 or 70 workers in the rural infrastructure that DAERA supports. The equivalent in urban areas is a couple of thousand; that is the difference in scale. I do not know whether that fully answers it, but some sort of protection for TRPSI would be a really good start.

Ms Conway: The anti-poverty strategy needs to move because it underpins so much of rural society, as it does urban society, indeed. It has been slow to come to fruition, so it really is time to move on with the anti-poverty strategy because it underpins so much other stuff.

I am not sure whether it is appropriate to say it here, but I have been thinking about something that has not been touched on. I know that we are here to talk about community development, but we live in a farming community, and many of us around the table are farmers or from farming families. Somebody said to me this morning that the inheritance tax proposals could mean the end of family farms. That is really scary. I had thought, "This is about big farmers who have loads of money. It does not apply to me", but I am a small farmer and I do not know what it will mean for me. From speaking to my neighbours, I know that it will have a real impact here. There is talk about land being worth £15,000 per acre, depending on your acreage, but that is before you call to mind all your farm buildings, your house and your machinery. It will have a huge effect on people. I know that not everybody who lives in a rural community is a farmer, but, if you are not, your neighbour or somebody nearby will be. It will affect people further to fore, so I hope that something is done about that.

Mr McCrickard: I will add to your question, Declan, in a similar vein. How do we connect to other topics? We know, as Patsy said, that climate change is with us forever. It will have huge implications for all our lives. We should, legislatively or another way, tie the need to protect our environment into all things. Protected environment outcomes are also good for health and economic outcomes, if we get that right. If we can use the priority of climate action, while protecting people and communities, there may be a legislative way, under that umbrella, to bring in investment that has many outcomes beyond climate action as it protects and improves economic and health outcomes.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you, guys.

Miss Brogan: Thanks again, folks, for attending and presenting. A particular welcome to you, Mary T. It is great to have Omagh represented so well. I know the great work that you do locally and really appreciate it.

You mentioned the WRAP programme, and I want to ask a similar question to the one that Robbie asked about how people are referred to you. Obviously, that happens through the agencies that you work alongside, and you mentioned Women's Aid. Is there an element of that programme — it may be an element of a different programme — where you work with women who have been affected by domestic abuse? It goes back to what Ciara Forsythe said earlier about the effects of domestic abuse on women in rural areas. She said that domestic abuse and violence was rife in rural areas. Do rural networks across the North have a role to play there?

Ms Conway: As independent organisations, we all do some work with those organisations. In rural areas, people have a pride and attachment to a family farm. If you are in an abusive relationship, it is about more than just your partner as it may be your family farm. There may be children involved, and it can be a very difficult situation for anyone who finds themselves in that position. There is so much to think about. We work with Women's Aid, and WRAP targets families. We focus more on families, if we can, and the vouchers will be more in our area: a family will get a £50 voucher, whereas an individual will get a £20 voucher. There is a definite focus on families. We also work with the Housing Executive, and it highlights the families and individuals in need of help. It is public, so people can self-refer to WRAP.

Mr McCrickard: We are involved with Women's Aid in Newry and Armagh, and it is an excellent organisation. In the last few weeks, I learned that this part of the world has the highest level of femicide — the killing of women — through domestic violence than anywhere else in Europe. I could not believe the statistics. Women's Aid does great work. We have a strategic stakeholder forum, and Women's Aid works very closely with us. In our part of the world, we have set up a social supermarket, and Women's Aid and Community Advice are part of that structure. They look out for people who come into the social supermarket and refer them to the appropriate service. It is a big issue.

Miss Brogan: It is a big issue. Very often, as we mentioned earlier, the housing crisis affects rural areas, and women who want to leave domestic abuse do not have an option because they will be deemed homeless. There is often a financial element, and financial abuse will be used to manipulate and have power over the woman in the house. It is great that you are looking into it.

Mary T mentioned that poverty rates in the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council area are greater than in other areas. I think, you said 20%.

Ms Conway: Compared with 18%. Yes.

Miss Brogan: Can you indicate why that is the case? Do you know?

Ms Conway: It is very close to the border. As Áine mentioned earlier, the South seems to be well catered for, with funding being pumped in to develop towns, and there are many opportunities there. There is a fear that people could move, which is a huge problem. The area also has more small farms in the farming community. There are many difficulties, and our local advice agency struggles with the number of people from the farming community who are in debt. It is difficult for the farming community to manage debt, because their income only comes in for part of the year, such as when stock is sold or the single farm payment comes in. For part of the year, the farm will be reasonably well off, and then there will be a time when things are rough. The changes to universal credit will have a significant effect on rural communities, particularly farming families. It is a real challenge, and our independent advice services see an increase in queries about that.

Mr McCrickard: Another under-recognised factor is drugs in rural communities. It is endemic across this part of the world.

That is having an impact on poverty. Where families get caught up and the teenage son or daughter is going off the rails, it drags the whole family down. I am sure that we all have personal stories about it. The fact is that it is not just urban. It is happening right across every rural town.

Ms Conway: Unfortunately, gambling is also a huge and growing issue because it is so accessible. Somebody can lift their phone and go and do online gambling. There is a bookie and a casino opposite our local food bank, and those in the food bank are saying that people are coming into the food bank after having been in the bookie and the casino, where they spent their money and do not have money for food. That is part of the reason why there are so many problems.

Miss Brogan: Yes, new issues such as drug abuse are developing. It is good that those are highlighted. Thank you, the three of you.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): I previously chaired and am now the vice-chair of the all-party group on reducing harm related to gambling, which Philip McGuigan now chairs. If you have anything on that subject, please send it through to me.

Mr Blair: Thanks to the three of you for that information and your presentations. I am keen to clarify one thing, because I have had a bit of a mixed picture on this in the past. There are two areas that appear to largely be in the Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council area and the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area that are not assigned a collective grouping on the map. An explanation of that would be good. I will take a note of it this time, because I have heard various rationale for this over the time.

Mr McCrickard: John, you are not the first one to say that. In this case, it is our fault for putting wee black lines on the map.

Mr Blair: There is a South Antrim Community Network somewhere.

Mr McCrickard: The Northern Area Community Network covers the whole area.

Mr Blair: It is now the Northern Area Community Network, not the South Antrim Community Network.

Mr McCrickard: It is now the Northern Area Community Network as opposed to the North Antrim Community Network, which it used to be called. I wish that Breige had never put those lines in. I have been asked that question several times. Breige Conway is our colleague in the Northern Area Community Network, which covers the three council areas. She has support from other groups, including the South Antrim Community Network, which has changed its name now, and other colleagues. The area is fully covered.

Mr Blair: That covers Mid and East Antrim, part of which is in my constituency.

Mr McCrickard: It does.

Mr Blair: That takes me neatly to the next question, which I also asked earlier. In all of what you are doing and all of what the various groups see across the areas, whether that is the worrying trend of gambling and online gambling, the increased use of food banks, health needs or isolation, how are you feeding in to the council community planning network? Am I really keen to have the community planning piece and to ensure that it is inclusive as part of our look at rural areas and rural affairs and what they do. I have my own experience of my own area. It does not matter whether it is good or bad, but we need to look at how we do it. It has been going now for 10 years. In some places, it does not seem to have been either firmly established or totally established, so it is time to rethink and review this. How does what you are doing on the ground feed in to where those processes are still going on?

Mr McCrickard: Great question, John. As I said earlier, I am chair of Newry, Mourne and Down community planning partnership. Most of us have representation on most community planning partnerships. I am the first to say that community planning has not worked well and nowhere near as well as it was designed to work. I think that it was mentioned this morning that there has been inconsistent attendance by other statutory partners around the table. Councils are doing their best, I think, in most cases, and there are some great plans. Ards and North Down has the "Big Plan". There are plenty of words on pages, but, in this part of the world, when we have a scarcity of resource, sometimes we set up a partnership to talk about it. We have to get down to practical actions coming out of those partnerships.

Unfortunately, it has been complicated a little bit more by the health sector in that there is now an integrated-care-system approach to the health system. It has now set up area integrated partnership boards, which are supposed to be doing the same thing: breaking down silos and working across government to impact better on health outcomes. There is an effort — there needs to be a real effort — under way to make sure that that does not contradict what is happening in community plans. I know that the health service and the councils are trying to batter that out. Community plans, in theory, should be the pre-eminent plan for a district, and then all the resources of all the Departments should be brought to bear on whatever needs come out of that plan. It is not perfect at the minute, and we find ourselves being invited to join all of these boards. We keep repeating the same thing, "Guys, break down the silos and work better together". We do not have the answers entirely.

Mr Blair: On the subject of silos and wider networks, it is understandable and rational that councils will be well connected with groups that the council members have known for a long time. The same councils will be connected with emerging networks for community representation, such as those represented on the map. My final question is this: how do the councils and the groups that are represented on the map connect with people who are new to the community, with communities that are new to the area or with those who may not have an established relationship with the community network or the council?

Ms Conway: We are not here to speak for the council.

Mr Blair: No, but I am asking how you feel that it works.

Ms Conway: Each council has its own approach. Our council and, I am sure, many others have district electoral areas (DEA). Rather than having one big geographical area, we have seven DEAs, which means that the area is broken down and is more easily managed. Councils have community services staff who work with the community groups on the ground. As rural support networks, we have engagement with groups as well. We work with groups and with the council, where we can, to make sure that there is no overlap. For example, if we are delivering training, we try to make sure that the council is not delivering similar training at the same time. It does not actually matter to the groups on the ground; they do not know who we are, necessarily. They might think, "Right, Mary T is going to come and help us with something". To them, as long as the support is there, they may not know whether it is the council or the community and voluntary sector.

Mr Blair: To be clear, I ask the question because a number of constituents come to me whose first language is not English. In most cases, if not every example, those people will not already be connected to a local community group and will therefore not be connected to the networks that are highlighted here. I am asking how we reach those people better and whether efforts are being made. Of course, I do not expect you to answer for the council, but perhaps you can reflect on how it might be doing that, if you know — if you do not, that is fine — and how the groups represented here connect to those people.

Ms Conway: In our area, there are two support organisations for newcomers. We have Omagh ethnic community support group, and we have Empowering Refugees and Newcomers Organisation (ERANO). As was said this morning, it is the community and voluntary sector that often comes in to support people. I do not know that the council has those communication angles; it is the community and voluntary sector that is there. Word of mouth will spread. If somebody comes over, they may be coming to someone who is already here. If they have come from Poland or wherever, they will have those networks and will know that Omagh ethnic community support group will support them with benefits advice, housing or whatever. In our area, the community and voluntary sector plays the key function there.

Mr McCrickard: Likewise, John, sometimes it is hit and miss. It is different in every area. Community groups do not always set up with the aim of welcoming newcomers; they are set up to run their hall, their local theatre group, a food bank or whatever their aim is. In a lot of cases, they do it with encouragement from us. All we can do is encourage people to reach out to the people who come into their areas. The whole complexion of most rural areas is changing now. In my home town, we have four nursing homes, and hundreds of ethnically diverse people work in them. In a lot of cases, they join in with local activities, where the groups are open to that. Where I work, in Ballymote in the centre of Downpatrick, the hall has become a mosque on a Friday from 1.00 pm, since the Syrians arrived. They come in and have their prayers there, and they were welcomed in doing that.

There is a mismatch of funding as well. For our part, County Down Rural Community Network recently delivered an asylum fund for the asylum seekers who were coming over on the boats and ending up in hotels. We were not so much involved in the Bangor one, but we were directly involved in the Newcastle one.

There is a mixed picture, but the networks are there to make sure that the 3,000 groups that make up our membership know that they need to be open to the idea of involving and welcoming people.

Mr Blair: I acknowledge that you and other groups do that, but I worry about the hit and miss, mixed-picture nature of it. That relates to the questions that I asked about community planning. It is important that the hit and miss dimension does not come to be about exclusion rather than inclusion. It needs to be consistent across council areas.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): That is a good and well-made point, John. I have noticed that point come up in a number of meetings.

We have a 1.20 pm stop time for this session, which is five minutes away. Two members are seeking to ask questions. Right, Patsy: I am watching you this time.

Mr McGlone: Last time, we were drawn into the issue of the lack policy development. You mentioned the issue of climate change, which is an area of policy in which the glib phrase "just transition" is used, and lot more meat has to be put on the bone by people such as yourselves: the practitioners on the ground who know or have ideas about how it could or would affect farming and rural areas more widely. Your experiences and ideas are invaluable for feeding into that process and making the Department aware that, rather than having people sitting in Clare House or wherever thinking about how it might be, it needs to hear from practitioners on the ground about their worries and concerns, as well as about potential opportunities.

That brings me to the second thing. Nicholas mentioned the idea of community buildings being used for EV charging points. I know what the electricity service people are doing for people in the South at the minute. Are you involved in that?

Mr McCrickard: No, not directly. There are moves towards that. Some of us have been asked to join a partnership.

Mr McGlone: Was that the EBS?

Mr McCrickard: It was not the EBS. There are different companies touting for business and setting that up.

Mr McGlone: I get that. As far as I know, however, there is a wider commercial project. I was just interested to hear whether you were involved with that at all. That is interesting. I will log that one.

Mr McCrickard: Put them in touch with the rural support networks; we would welcome the opportunity to work with them.

Mr McGlone: That is great. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Áine, you are wrapping up the session.

Ms Á Murphy: Thank you, Chair. I will try to be brief.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): No pressure.

Ms Á Murphy: Thank you, folks, for coming to brief the Committee. I meet Barry, Louise, Siobhán and the team in Fermanagh, and I know that you work closely with them as well. In response to John's question, Mary T mentioned trying to avoid overlap. In your opinion, is there any overlap with Fermanagh and Omagh District Council? Could things be a wee bit smoother or more nuanced?

Ms Conway: That is a wee bit of a delicate question. We make approaches to the council and work well with it, but we could work on that area. Years ago, we had a thing called the community support forum in which the community and voluntary sector met the council regularly and went through the type of work that it was doing in order to avoid that duplication of work. John made a point about community planning, and that is the stage at which that should happen. There is a CVS forum that involves the rural support networks — Fermanagh Rural Community Network (FRCN) and us — independent advice services, community transport and all those organisations.

I suppose that more could be made of that, but a recent good example is of when secretariat, which is provided by the council, helped us to gather the opinions of everyone on the CVS forum on the draft Programme for Government so that we could submit a collective response to the consultation. There are things like that. As rural support networks, we are out on the ground, and that is where our strength is. We talk to people on the ground. RCN can help with things like that from a policy point of view. It may be that more could be made of that in the council whereby, if there was a policy that might affect a rural area, it could work with us to build that up.

Ms Á Murphy: Earlier, I asked Kate a question about red tape and bureaucracy. I attended the AGM of the FRCN a number of weeks ago, and, as I touched on, there is a lot of paperwork and a lot of people to deal with not only from the council but the Department. Going forward, could there be improvements? From your point of view, how could that be done more smoothly?

Ms Conway: The Department is one of the main — what word should I use?

Mr McCrickard: Bureaucratic.

Ms Conway: Yes, bureaucratic. We administer the rural micro capital grant scheme on behalf of DAERA. It is £2,000 of maximum grant aid. There is a lot of bureaucracy involved with that. I appreciate that DAERA is used to working with farmers on a bigger scale, but, for the level of money, it has to be more proportionate for small groups. They are all wee groups, and you do your best to bring them in and support them in making their applications, but there is much going backwards and forwards. There has to be some way, even if it is some form of retention of constitutions or governing documents, to make it easier for those groups. They are crying out, and we are the ones in the middle, so we get the crux of the queries and the blame. There has to be some way to make it easier to get a £2,000 grant.

Mr McCrickard: The Department for Communities is coming up with some innovative thinking around looking at a council-sized area or maybe a smaller area — a cluster of towns and villages — and at having global grants where all the Departments contribute to a global pot and then local people decide — whether that is through community planning or other means — on a plan and deliver the plan with a global grant. That might be a way to cut through some of the multilayers. For every major community project, for example, building a hall or modifying a hall, you need multiple sources. They are all asking for different targets on different bits of paper and different responses. Having some sort of connected one might work.

Sorry. I will stop.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): That is OK. I was talking to Mary T. That was like a 'Father Ted' moment. Very quickly.

Ms Conway: The other thing is about the Charity Commission. I appreciate that not every group is registered with the Charity Commission, but, if you are a registered charity, you have already come through a level of due diligence and all the rest, plus your documents are on the Charity Commission website. Your accounts and what you have done throughout the year are there. There could even be some way of deferring to that.

Ms Á Murphy: Just to wrap up, Chair, I know that it can be done and the red tape — I will not say "removed" — could be relaxed. We saw it happen during COVID. The money was there; it had to go out the door and be put into good schemes. It is possible. Obviously, there needs to be due diligence, but there are ways around it that we have seen proven in the past. Thank you, folks.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): Thank you, Áine.

The former Chair was absolutely right about Patsy McGlone. I will not say what he said, but he was absolutely right, Patsy.

Mr McGlone: No, that is OK. I am actually going to correct myself. I think that, earlier, I might have said EBS, but I should have said ESB, on the electricity project. I am sorry about that.

The Chairperson (Mr Butler): No bother.

I apologise. I hope that the session did not feel too cramped or squashed, but it was very useful. Thank you so much for your time, for the presentation and for answering questions. I am sure that there will be follow-ups. As with the previous panel, I am sure that we will come back to this, particularly with the developments.

Ms Conway: We really appreciate it. Thank you.

Mr McCrickard: We really appreciate it. Thank you.