Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I advise members that the Committee has been sent the most recent retention and disposal schedule for TEO. The schedule is subject to the negative resolution procedure, and any Member or Committee may seek a resolution to pray for the preservation of specified records in a retention and disposal schedule.

In line with the principle that Assembly Committees have a role in scrutinising the actions of their respective Departments, the retention and disposal schedules will continue to be sent to the Committee for Communities. However, it may not be best placed to scrutinise retention and disposal schedules of public bodies that do not fall under the remit of the Department for Communities. Retention and disposal schedules that are sent to the Committee are required to be treated in much the same way as a statutory rule.

The updated document is version 5 of the TEO schedule. It is the first revision since version 4, which dates from 2016 and reflected the change in departmental title from OFMDFM to TEO. Version 5 is a substantially revised version with a different structure and the inclusion of additional areas, functions and arm's-length bodies that would not have existed in 2016.

I advise members that the time frame for Committee consideration of the schedule is very tight. Members must come to a position on the schedule before 26 May 2026, given that it needs to be considered by two Committees and, if a motion is sought, it must be tabled in a plenary sitting before the end of the statutory period. I also advise members that we may wish to seek an urgent written update from Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) officials on the changes to the schedule, specifically covering what has changed since the previous version in 2016, what the rationale is for the time frames and suggested action for specific items and other concerns.

Are we agreed?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Do we have to get agreement to write to the other Committee or —?

Go ahead, Carál.

Ms Ní Chuilín: Why will we write to PRONI? It is the Department's paperwork that it is disposing. We should write to the Department.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Clerk, go ahead.

The Committee Clerk: We can write to both. If the Committee is content, we will write to DFC and to PRONI.

Mr Brett: I think that it is TEO.

Ms Ní Chuilín: It is TEO.

The Committee Clerk: OK. We will write to TEO and to PRONI, then, if members are content.

Ms Ní Chuilín: All that PRONI is doing is accepting the records that TEO is disposing, so there is no point in writing to it. It is TEO's records, and the difference between 2016 and now is that it has changed its name. That is all that it is, so I do not understand it.

The Committee Clerk: TEO it is, then.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK, so we will just write to TEO, then. Are we agreed?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK, thank you. Is there anything else that we need to do on that?

The Committee Clerk: No, Chair.