Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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116. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if he will report on the operation of Government's rural proofing policy, and the metrics against which its adherence is measured. [54985/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Our Rural Future, the national rural development policy, committed to developing an effective rural proofing approach.

My Department commissioned and published a body of research on rural proofing, which was published online, which sets out some of the key international evidence in relation to rural proofing. A Rural Proofing Pilot was subsequently undertaken on four key initiatives across a number of Government Departments.

Currently, the Cabinet Handbook requires all government proposals being submitted by memo for Government to outline the impact of the given proposal on rural areas. As evidenced by the pilot, 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 sought to build on and strengthen the existing approach by developing a Guide to Rural Proofing for Policy Makers.

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 principle purpose 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 also available online, has been circulated to all Government Departments to be added to the suite of tools/processes used by policy makers.

The importance of rural proofing has been highlighted by my officials in recent bilateral meetings held with Departments in the context of the development of the new rural policy from 2026. This will also help ensure that actions developed across Government to support the policy implementation will more effectively consider the impacts for rural areas and help result in better outcomes for rural communities.

I am confident the Guide will serve as a practical and user friendly tool for Government Departments to support that process and help ensure that rural issues are fully taken account of in the development of major policy initiatives across Government.