Ms Sarah Clancy:

There is one thing we have not mentioned on the consultation. Everybody imagines there are communities there with all the time to do them. People doing a consultation think their consultation is the most important thing which is happening. I will take the example of County Clare. We will have community consultations on the LEADER funding, and on the local economic and community plan.

There has been community consultation for the county development plan and that is continuing. The same community groups are repeatedly asked roughly the same series of questions in consultations with very little feedback. I suggest that in some ways the multipurpose consultations around views means we have already consulted. I mean that PPNs have provided a model as we have all compiled well-being vision statements for our counties. We got views from all of our members' groups on a range of issues so everything from the environment to just transition, social justice and services. In lots of ways that facilitates our work because we have already consulted. That is not to say that for a specific thing happening in a specific area that people should not be entitled to be consulted on it again. If one has a baseline, for how people feel that their community should be developed into the future, to start from then that might help us to be a little bit more efficient. For example, someone may already be a member of a Tidy Towns group so more consultation may be a problem. Unless one is a nerd like us more consultations may cause a problem. A person may have children who have matches to attend and everything else is happening in one's life so attending another evening meeting can be an issue. That is not my analysis of democracy. The State depends spectacularly on voluntary groups to give of their free time but at a time when people or groups have a reducing amount of free time due to their having busy lives, commuting, returning to the workplace, etc. I urge the committee to not overestimate what time volunteers have available to give to commitments and, therefore, it is even more important not to ever waste their time. We occasionally do that ourselves but try not to. If I am going to gather people and so make them travel or participate online, and they, for example, go to the trouble of getting someone to mind their children then I will make sure that I can provide every bit of useful information, that we use that information and I will do my best to feed back to them where and when we are using the information. That is the model we need to use and we must be open to change. Do not call something a consultation if it is not that. If a consultation is happening then information must be shared about why it is happening, etc. and let people challenge that but only consult if one is able to be open about what actually does happen.

The PPNs have a huge member group but a very limited staff and financial resource plus our remit is widening all of the time. As other Departments want to use the PPNs and consult with its members, then PPNs need to be resourced in order for that to happen. My key message is that if we believe that the PPNs are the method through which we want to consult communities then we need to invest in PPNs, grow them and support them and not just say that they exist.