Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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46. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if he will report on their implementation of a rural proofing model. [68521/25]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Our Rural Future committed to developing an effective rural proofing approach.  My Department commissioned a body of research on rural proofing, available 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.  The pilot evidenced 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 developed a Guide to Rural Proofing for Policy Makers 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 principal 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, 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 also been highlighted in bilateral meetings with Departments in the development of the new Our Rural Future policy from 2026.  This will help ensure that actions developed across Government to support the policy implementation will more effectively consider the impacts for rural areas, helping result in better outcomes for rural communities. There is also evidence of early engagement by Departments in the development of key strategies, which can help ensure the principles of effective rural proofing are built into the design of those strategies.

I am confident the guide will serve as a practical and user friendly tool for 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.