Ms Yvonne Woods:

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for his comments. We have seen many of the points that he made. The Acting Chairman pointed out that social impact assessments have been tried before in various Departments, and we are aware of that. We are just asking that this be stepped up. We hope our proposals will be useful. The proposals of our colleagues are conducive to this. Whether it is on poverty, human rights, equality or whatever, impact assessments will stop mistakes from being made and will stop time and resources being wasted. It will also stop people from being put in a position of destitution, with all sorts of horrendous outcomes for them and their dependants. We have seen chains of people being affected by the ongoing mortgage arrears crisis. We are thankful for the opportunity to be here and we hope it has been useful for the committee.