Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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3436. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for an update on the rural proofing model pledged in Our Rural Future; the number of departments that have adopted the model; and if he will commit to statutory backing for the mechanism. [40788/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Our Rural Future, Government's current five-year rural development policy, committed to developing an effective rural proofing approach. In addressing this commitment, my Department initially commissioned and published a body of research on rural proofing. This research is available online, and sets out some of the key international evidence in relation to rural proofing.

A Rural Proofing Pilot was subsequently undertaken across a number of Government Departments. The pilot process included the review of the National Planning Framework, the development of the Sustainable Tourism Policy, the forthcoming National Hubs Strategy, and development of the Trading for Impact: Social Enterprise Strategy 2024-2027.

It is clear that a level of rural proofing is already taking place within the current system, although it may not be labelled with a formal ‘rural proofing’ tag. In recognising this, my Department has developed a Guide to Rural Proofing for Policy Makers in order to build on and strengthen the existing approach. The Guide, which includes a simplified Rural Proofing Assessment template and key resources, aims to provide a clear outline of what rural proofing is and to make rural proofing easy to understand and implement. The core objective is to aid and support policy makers to ‘think rural’ when developing policies to help ensure government policies understand, and take account of, specific needs and capacities of rural communities.

The Guide, which is available online, has been circulated to all Government Departments to be added to the suite of tools/processes used by policy makers. I am confident the Guide will serve as a practical and user friendly tool for Government Departments to ensure that rural issues are fully taken account of in the development of major policy initiatives.