Debate contribution: Regional Balance Bill: Second Stage
Debate contribution by Ms Sinéad McLaughlin on .
- MLA
- Ms Sinéad McLaughlin
- Party at the time
- Social Democratic and Labour Party
- Date
- 8 September 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Regional Balance Bill: Second Stage
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5674380
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank the Member for taking an intervention. I agree with what you are saying about diagnosing the issue and why it is happening. That is why I have listed a series of indices at clause 7. There is no one statistic that can tell you how you will achieve regional balance. There is a plethora of economic statistics and indices, but there are also deprivation indices relating to poverty and child poverty. I speak to people in my constituency, and they ask me —. We often use jargon in this place: we understand what "regional balance" means, and we assume that others understand it as well. The Bill is part of an anti-poverty strategy. It is about building a fairer society. It is about your child not having to emigrate. There is a contraction of population in my constituency. In my city, people are leaving because of a lack of opportunity. There is a contraction of growth in Cara's constituency, but it is for a different reason: it is because of the older population there. When you collect data from a wide range of sources and places, and have a broad range of statistics on living standards and poverty levels and economic statistics, you can drill deep down into the issue. I use "average" in the Bill for some of the measurements and "median" for others, because you do not want an outlier to drive something in a different direction. One business that pays very, very high wages in a city or town will distort the figures. When the Department and Executive develop that strategic framework, we want them to dig deep and bring that data together. Your colleague Kate is always talking about data, because the data tells the story. We need the wider framework in order to get that story.
303 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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