Ms Suzanne Keatinge:

I rely on the voluntary national review reports on the role of civil society, which are done on a country-by-country basis. Civil society in every country seems to be saying it is not getting a role and there have been lots of different tales. In one country civil society organisations said the government contacted them three days prior to its report, asking them if they had anything to say about it, and in other countries they were not consulted at all. The story is slightly better in Ireland but I do not think there has been a genuine dialogue and we did not feel we could shape the report in any way, which is why we produced our shadow report.

I appreciate Senator Bacik's reference to SDG 5 as it is very important. The beauty of SDGs is that they link what we do at home with what is going on overseas. We want the White Paper to contain a strong leadership role on gender equality. I think it is there but we need to keep pushing it. Maybe there will be an opportunity to bring the two roles together and to make sure what we do at home is coherent with what is happening overseas. It would be great to have more dialogue on that.