Debate contribution: Committee for Communities: Report on Engagement with Local Government on the Draft Anti-poverty Strategy

Debate contribution by Ms Sian Mulholland on 26 May 2026.

MLA

Ms Sian Mulholland

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

26 May 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Committee Business

Heading

Committee for Communities: Report on Engagement with Local Government on the Draft Anti-poverty Strategy

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5582535

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Communities Committee's report on engagement with local government on the draft anti-poverty strategy. First, I thank the clerking team for all their hard work in taking forward my suggestion to compile the report, once we realised just how valuable the contribution of councils was to the conversation. I support the report and its recommendations. It reflects exactly what all of us have heard from councils, advice workers, community organisations and families, who tell us every day that poverty cannot be tackled from a desk in Stormont alone. It has to be tackled in our towns and villages and our rural communities alongside the people and organisations who understand those communities best. The report is clear that councils are already delivering vital anti-poverty work from hardship funds through to social supermarkets, labour market partnerships and local advice networks. Right now, however, they are doing that work without clarity, authority, funding or the status that they need and deserve. The draft strategy has to do more to recognise councils and community planning partnerships as central delivery partners. That matters in all constituencies and communities, but, in my council area of Causeway Coast and Glens, where poverty is not hidden, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's (JRF) latest analysis estimates that 23% of people live in poverty — the second-highest rate of any council area in Northern Ireland. That shows why the anti-poverty strategy cannot be generic. It has to recognise regional imbalance, rural poverty and particular pressures facing communities such as Causeway Coast and Glens, where housing, transport, low pay, seasonal work, childcare and skills gaps interact to make people feel trapped in poverty. The strategy also has to recognise that, while the Minister frequently references getting people into work, work alone is not the route out of poverty. The JRF has shown that the majority of people in poverty now live in working households, including 64% of children in poverty and 60% of working-age adults in poverty. Work is not the only route, although it is one of them. Almost half of workers have experienced low pay in the past five years. Yes, we need jobs, but we do not need just any jobs; we need good jobs. We need secure, fairly paid work with enough hours and flexibility for parents and carers and real accessibility for disabled people and others facing barriers to employment. That is particularly important, again, in my area of Causeway Coast and Glens. The local labour market partnership has identified economic inactivity, unemployment, disability employment and skilled labour supply as key priorities. The economy inactivity rate is 30·1% when the Northern Ireland average is 26·3%, and the area has the lowest employment rate in Northern Ireland. That is why the anti-poverty strategy must be directly linked to good jobs, skills, childcare, disability employment support and regional economic development.

Yes.

Thank you. Absolutely; it has to be owned across the Executive, by the stakeholders and particularly in partnership with our councils. Councils cannot be treated as optional consultees or convenient delivery partners. They have to be placed on an equal footing with the Department for Communities in the delivery of the strategy. Councils know where the poverty is. They know which organisations already carry out effective engagement. They know where the transport gaps stop people getting to work, where advice services are under pressure and where local interventions already hold families together. They cannot do that work properly on short-term, competitive, last-minute funding. Poverty is long-term, and the response has to be long-term too. The Programme for Government aims to have:

"more people working in better jobs",

and that is a right and proper ambition, but, for communities such as mine, it has to be more than just a slogan. It has to be backed by targets, funding, local delivery solutions and structures capable of changing lives and a focus on the life-cycles of individuals, because the experience of poverty is not linear. The final anti-poverty strategy therefore has to be measurable, properly resourced, co-designed with people who are living in and experiencing poverty now and delivered in genuine partnership with local government. It has to put councils and community planning partnerships at the heart of delivery, not just at the margins. People do not live in silos, and they do not simply need help to survive poverty; they need a real and genuine route out of it. I support the report, and I urge the Minister and the Executive to act on its recommendations in full.

756 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:40 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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