Ms Anna Mercer:

I am happy to answer on the outcomes-based approach and the economic realities. It is a really good point. Places like New Zealand have budgeted for outcomes. One problem, and why I think legislation is needed for the outcomes-based approach, is that if you do not put all the pieces of the machine in place, it will not work. There is a really good example of this in community planning. Our local councils were given duties to deliver well-being in 2014. We have been working with the Carnegie Trust on delivering that. One example is in Derry where a community crisis intervention service was set up in response to crisis mental health issues. It had buy-in from a range of public agencies which are obliged under the legislation to act in partnership as well as community and voluntary service. In the first six months it had 141 interventions, which is essentially suicide prevention, and generated £23,000 in savings in that time. However, because we do not budget for outcomes, the Assembly had a debate on this twice, calling on the Minister for Health to provide funding to cover the services. Part of this is about health but a lot of it is about other issues, including poverty, community, and policing and justice. It sits within so many areas. Until we move our budgeting to reflect an outcomes-based model we will not get it right. We cannot do this in little bits, we need to do it in totality.

Deputy Mac Lochlainn mentioned the civic forum. The citizens' assembly model might be a better one now because it brings everyone in, it does not just take the people whose voices are probably heard in other walks of life that are advocating and representing. It is the people on the ground who are living in communities are those who we really need to hear from. They are the people whose confidence in the institutions is probably a lot lower and their voices are not heard. We need a model of deliberative democracy. That energy would be better spent in a citizens assembly model at this point.