Ms Sorcha de Brúch:

As set out in the briefing note provided, the Department does not have responsibility for all the individual areas. One of the roles of the islands division within the Department is to try to co-ordinate across the various sectors and, to a certain degree, to advocate on behalf of island communities. That is why it is so important for us to be able to meet with individual communities to hear what their individual needs are. As set out in the briefing, we held meetings on many of the islands until we had to stop holding such meetings as a result of Covid. However, we have continued them on an online basis. The meetings give us a very good feel for what these issues are. The decision to look at developing an islands policy was taken by Cabinet agreement. That is the level of seriousness the Government applies on this issue.

This was decided at a Cabinet meeting, with all the Ministers agreeing that their individual Departments would look at whatever services are being delivered on the islands and would try to come together with a better policy. From one perspective it is kind of fragmented but it would not make sense either for these services to be delivered just to those individuals. What the Department of Rural and Community Development is doing, through the islands division, is trying to advocate for that and pull all of that together to give a bigger voice to these islands. For all that they are rural communities they do have slightly different challenges from others. That point was very well made and it is a point we are trying to address through the islands policy.