H.E. Mr. David Donoghue:

Senator Mullins asked what structure there is at present to review progress. Strictly speaking, we will be creating new structures through the September summit and the document that will be issued. There will be a global structure to review progress in implementing the goals and targets. There is a body called the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development which has just finished meeting in New York. It is under the United Nations Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC, and this high-level political forum, which is only about two years old, will have the responsibility to carry out reviewing and monitoring at global level. That much is clear. The detail of how it will do that is only being worked out and, in fact, not all of that detail will even appear in the outcome document for September.

I mentioned earlier the reservations that many developing countries have about machinery which is too intrusive at global level, from their point of view. On the other hand, there are developed countries which feel that, especially with the massive amount of resources which will be directed towards implementing these goals and targets, there must be something systematic and rigorous at global level. It will be a compromise. What will probably happen is that the high-level political forum will meet once a year and it will have a supporting secretariat. It will receive reports from individual member states and it will summon them over a period of several years. Obviously with 193 member states, it will not be easy.

There will also be thematic reviews. It might be that individual UN agencies will carry out a review of, for example, gender equality, migrants, indigenous peoples or some such aspect, and see how they are doing under the new goals and targets. These are ideas which are being worked on at present and, precisely because many developing countries are worried about something which is too structured and prescriptive, we will probably hold back on much of that detail. The document for September will be couched in very general terms.

At the regional level, there are already some regional commissions, for example, in central America or in west Africa, which represent UN interests. They will be used to carry out some element of peer review. The phrase "peer review" goes down badly, but it is the idea of comparison between one country and another in a positive spirit to see if there are lessons which can be learned within a particular region from the effectiveness of one country in achieving the goals on, for example, health, and whether those lessons can be carried across. It is meant to be a positive experience sharing approach.

Most of the effort will be at national level. Most countries will set up some type of centralised arrangement to monitor how they are doing on the SDGs. Each country will do its own thing. In fact, in some cases countries have already set up the machinery before the new goals have even been approved. Colombia, for example, makes much of the fact that it has a national plan which already reflects the draft goals and targets from last year. National development plans around the world will be used to give effect to the goals and targets. That is a somewhat lengthy reply but I wished to indicate the thinking that already exists. I note the comment on the 0.7% target, but I will not respond on that. The Senator also referred to the tax justice issue.

Deputy Conway is absolutely right about gender equality. To reassure her, there is a really strong sense that virtually no issue is more important than gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in terms of the implementation of this new framework . It is hard to quantify matters and say one issue is more important than another, but across the board in all groups of countries there is a strong emphasis on the importance of gender equality. The Deputy has read goal No. 5. Perhaps I can refer to the declaration I mentioned earlier, which will be a key part of the document. There is a paragraph where we state:

Working for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls will make a crucial contribution to progress across all the goals and targets. The achievement of full human potential and of sustainable development is not possible if one half of humanity continues to be denied its full rights and opportunities. This is also a basic issue of human rights. ...Women and girls must enjoy equal access to education...[and so forth].

I am just giving a flavour of it. That is the type of language that will be used in the declaration. The specific issues raised by Deputy Conway are perhaps covered by the following:

We commit to accelerating the progress made to date in reducing infant, child and maternal mortality by ending all preventible deaths of infants, children and expectant mothers by 2030. We shall ensure universal access to sexual reproductive health care services, including for family planning, information and education etc.

The Deputy's concerns are valid and they are being addressed not only in terms of the goals and targets set but in the surrounding declaration. I believe they will be highlighted in the public presentation of the goals and targets.

On data collection, again the point made was an extremely important one. The developed countries recognise that they will have to help many developing countries to not only improve their statistical capacity but to create it in the first instance. There are some countries that do not exist in statistical terms because they have never been able to file returns. This new framework will not work unless we can show that returns have been filed for every country in the world. We will have to be able to fill in all the blanks.This is recognised as a responsibility for the more affluent countries that are in a position to provide resources. It is a crucial issue. Also, indicators are being developed by the UN Statistical Commission, along with civil society, which will help countries to check on their progress. For example, if one of the targets is that all children will have access to primary education, which may seem obvious, an indicator might be that by 2021 98% of all children will be in primary schools, with this increasing to 100% by 2030. I am simplifying it bit but indicators will be a third element, coming after the goals and targets. Those indicators are being developed by statisticians. The purpose of the indicators is to help countries plot the pace at which they will implement these goals and targets. All of this is dependent on high quality disaggregated data which allow us to capture the gender balance on particular issues and so on. We need to have much more detailed data available to us than has been available to us up to now. Deputy Conway is correct that the new goals and targets cannot be implemented without that.

I agree with Senator Daly's points in regard to COP21. By way of clarification, although the post-2015 agenda and Addis Ababa tracks work closely together and, in fact, overlap to a degree, the climate change negotiations are happening independently. We do not have any greater insight to those than anybody else. At the same time, the political imperative of the three conferences being linked together and of good outcomes in each is being highlighted by everybody. For example, Mary Robinson is taking a keen interest in our negotiations and in the Addis Ababa negotiations because she knows that in the context of the new goals and targets, there will be an impetus towards a good outcome in Paris. She also knows that a good Addis Ababa package should include climate finance. As the Special Envoy of the Secretary General for Climate Change she can see direct use, to put it mildly, for our two sets of negotiations in terms of her own agenda. She wants to see the three knitted very closely together, as we all do. We are hoping that there will be a momentum building from a good meeting in Addis Ababa, through to a good New York outcome and another in December, such that it would be very difficult for countries who have signed up to the earlier commitments to then dodge them somehow or not follow through on them by agreeing a universal climate change agreement. That is the theory of it. It is what we are all hoping for.

I thank Deputy Durkan for his comments on equality, with which I agree. The Deputy spoke about the problems faced, in particular, by immigrant populations here. There is no doubt that equality is at the heart of the entire agenda. It is also emphasised in this declaration that we are combatting poverty and inequality of all kinds. It is almost the same concept. Another phrase we use a lot is, "Nobody is to be left behind". While that is a nice, sentimental slogan what it really means is that we do not want any marginalised people, people the system has somehow forgotten about. In every country, there are communities of indigenous peoples, for example, who for one reason or another have not been protected by the system. The motto of the new goals and targets is that nobody is to be left behind. This will have to be worked out in practice.