Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 28 June 2023
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection
Sustainable Development Goals: Discussion
Ms Colette Bennett:
I thank the Deputy for the question. Our assessment is a comparative report which compares Ireland with our EU-14 peers. Because of that, we needed to gather data that are comparable across the EU-14. Page 79 of our report contains the appendix, which goes through each of the indicators that are used, as well as the source of those indicators. As the Deputy said, some of the indicators that might come under the area of zero poverty, for example, just do not apply to a developed economy like ours. Similarly, our indicators around world hunger are not about under-nutrition and starvation, but relate more to obesity indicators and food quality. In terms of SDG 1, for the poverty rate after taxes and transfers, we have a poverty line of 50%, and that data are sourced from the OECD. We can compare that across the EU-14. There are people living in households with low work intensity and there is the share of severely deprived people. They are the indicators we use to measure the progress in comparison to our European peers.
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