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 5674401
Read the official Assembly record
Text
We were conscious, first, that there not should not be a strategy for strategy's sake and that there should not be reporting for reporting's sake. We built accountability into the Bill. Part 2 is about accountability and transparency. There is a level of reporting in it, but also a level of evaluation. Evaluating what is going wrong if it is not working is as important as evaluating something that is working. The fundamental part of the Bill is about creating a baseline. The Department will select a baseline year, with all the indices and measurements, and, from then on, it will have an annual reporting system and a five-year review. We wanted to build in a certain amount of flexibility, because the world is changing very fast, so the measurement that we use today could be absolutely useless tomorrow. AI is hot on our heels in all of this — no, it is way before us — and we do not know how our economy is going to evolve, so a certain degree of flexibility and review is built into the matter to make sure that we are not doing something just for the sake of doing it or because we said so. It is flexible.
206 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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