§ Mr. MallonTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will give details of the developments arising from the report of the interdepartmental committee on rural development.
§ Mr. BrookeThe Inter-Departmental Committee on Rural Development reported in December 1990, and I was pleased to be able to announce on 15 February that Ministers had endorsed the broad thrust of the Committee's recommendations.
Accordingly, I have allocated ministerial and departmental responsibility for rural development to the agriculture portfolio and have asked that Department to take forward urgently the establishment of an advisory body and resource centre outside Government and under the management of a broad spectrum of rural interests. I 298W am also establishing under the Department of Agriculture a small team of co-ordinators to integrate the responses from statutory agencies to locally developed regeneration plans.
A further statement giving more detail of the mechanisms and structures to be put in place to assist the process of rural development in the most deprived rural areas of Northern Ireland will be issued shortly.