Northern Ireland Assembly Flax Flower Logo

COMMITTEE FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Committee Office Room 402
Parliament Buildings
Belfast
BT4 3XX
Tel: 02890 521970
Fax: 02890 525927
Email committee.regionaldevelopment@niassembly.gov.uk

Danny Kennedy, MLA
Chairperson of the Committee for the Office of the
First Minister and Deputy First Minister
Northern Ireland Assembly
Stormont Estate
Belfast
Northern Ireland
BT4 3XX

29 November 2007

Inquiry into Child Poverty

Dear Danny,

  1. Further to your letter of 1 November 2007 seeking responses to the Inquiry into Child Poverty, the Committee is pleased to make the following points in response to your request.
  2. On the surface it may appear that regional development has little direct relationship to tackling child poverty. However, the Committee is of the view that issues such as road, rail and bus and other modes of public transport infrastructure, together with water reform, can all have positive and negative impacts on the rate and experience of child poverty.
  3. A substantial amount of our public transport is road based and access to health and social services, employment, education and training and cultural and sporting activities depends on an adequate, sustainable, safe and effective road network. The absence of such opportunities and services exacerbates poverty and social exclusion.
  4. Like roads infrastructure, a good quality, integrated network of bus and rail transport services is key to underpinning economic development, and access to education, employment, leisure and social services. Investment in public transport also brings environmental benefits, in the form of reduced carbon emissions, landscape, air and noise pollution. Failure to adequately resource public transport has an adverse effect on the environment, heightens social exclusion, and may jeopardise the recent and much welcomed positive economic growth.
  5. Children, especially those children living in households in poverty, are often dependent on public transport for access to education, training and leisure opportunities. This dependence is underlined in the case of children living in poverty in rural areas across Northern Ireland, and those children living in poverty who have a disability. In such instances, rurality, in terms of scarcity of good quality service, and disability, in terms of accessibility, can serve to reinforce the experience of living in poverty.  
  6. Finally, the proposals outlined by the Executive in its statement of response to the Independent Water Review Panel’s (IWRP) Strand One Report on the Review of Water and Sewerage Services, make provision for the introduction of domestic charges for water from 2009/10 onwards. These charges would be additional to the current rates bills. At the time of writing the Executive had not commented on the basis for charging, however the IWRP had suggested that charges should be on the same basis as rates, capital values.
  7. The Executive has deferred comment on any proposed affordability tariff pending the completion of additional research by the IWRP. This research should be published for discussion and consultation in late December 2007 / early January 2008. However, the Committee had expressed its concerns in relation to the impact such charges will have on the household economy of thousands of households across Northern Ireland who are currently in or near poverty.
  8. The Committee would bring the points above to your attention and suggest that the issues of rural child poverty and poverty for those children with disabilities would feature in your Inquiry. The Committee would further suggest that in the course of your Inquiry you might want to seek inputs on water poverty and child poverty from Professor Paddy Hillyard of the IWRP, or contact Advice NI for briefing on their work in relation to the impact of water charging on debt management and household indebtedness.

Yours sincerely,

Fred Cobain MLA
Chairperson
Regional Development Committee