The Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys, has today (Monday, January 29) welcomed an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) report that seeks to inform the development of a high level monitoring framework for rural development in Ireland.
The report, titled ‘Developing a Framework to Monitor Rural Development Policy in Ireland: Opportunities and Challenges’, draws on international best practice to emphasise the importance of a long-term monitoring approach to understanding rural development outcomes.
It puts forward a range of potential Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which would inform the monitoring of rural development policy outcomes over the long-term, and identifies data to support this.
Monitoring rural development policy
A total of 45 KPIs were identified for measuring the impact of the government’s five-year rural development policy, ‘Our Rural Future (2021-2025)’.
An additional 69 indicators were identified for measuring rural development impacts under the National Well-being Framework.
Ireland’s Well-being Framework, which was launched in July 2021, seeks to move beyond using just economic measures to gauge our progress as a country, by looking at economic, environmental and social issues together, rather than separately or in isolation.
It focuses on quality of life, with a particular emphasis on equality and sustainability.
The ESRI report also notes that many of the potential indicators identified would need further work to be available at a suitably localised geographic level, including with the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Welcoming the ESRI report, Minister Humphreys said: “My department delivers a large range of different schemes worth over €400 million each year, working with rural communities, community groups, social enterprises, local authorities, Men’s Sheds, and Tidy Towns groups across the country.
“This funding has a hugely positive effect on communities, and I want to ensure we are measuring the wider impacts of this investment and government-wide actions in place through ‘Our Rural Future’.
“I welcome the publication of this ESRI report which will help build our data and insights in this space, support our evidence-informed policy decisions, and complement work across government on developing Ireland’s Well-being Framework.
“Ultimately such work will help to ensure we make the best decisions for our rural communities and marginalised groups across Ireland,” she added.
The research was funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development (DRCD).
Key findings
Examining changes in KPIs in rural and urban areas to measure the impacts of rural development is of limited value, as such an approach masks a large amount of variation across such geographic areas.
Instead, a more realistic approach is to develop indicators using the current CSO six-way urban–rural classification that will allow for the impacts of rural development to be measured and compared in, e.g., cities, smaller towns, semi-rural and highly rural areas.
The study identified 45 KPIs to monitor the effectiveness of ‘Our Rural Future’s’ scheme/fund-based measures at the six-way urban–rural classification level. However, only nine are currently available at this required spatial level.
The authors also identified 69 KPIs to monitor changes in overall levels of well-being within rural communities, but only four are currently available at the required six-way urban–rural classification level.
Given the differences that exist across rural areas, best practice encourages the use of stakeholder engagement in identifying the most appropriate indicators to use for each rural area.
Dr. Elish Kelly, an author of the report and ESRI senior research officer, commented: “The DRCD is being proactive in wanting to establish a framework to monitor the impacts of rural development policies in Ireland.
“To assist the department in doing this, and in its capacity to effectively monitor the effectiveness of rural policy initiatives, it is imperative that efforts are made to achieve a rapid increase in the number of KPIs available under the six-way urban–rural classification.”