Ms Niamh Garvey:

Deputy Grealish asked whether many countries had reached the 0.7% target. I do not have the exact figure but the Deputy is correct that the UK has reached the target, as have a number of Scandinavian countries. I will come back to him with the exact number but I believe there are between five and seven countries which have met their commitments.

On the question from Senator Bacik on the interdepartmental groups, the predecessor to the sustainable development goals, SDGs, had a place in the Rio negotiations and the Department of the Environment, as it was then, had a historical role in representing Ireland in this regard at the international level. That may explain why this is housed in a particular Department.

On the connections between policy coherence for development, which has interdepartmental groups, and the SDG process, which has interdepartmental groups, there is a common thread in that. Regardless of the existence of the groups, the issue is the effectiveness of the groups in meeting the ambition for a more whole-of-Government or more policy coherent approach. The OECD Development Assistance Committee, DAC, review of Irish Aid has consistently pointed to policy coherence for development being one of the weaker areas of Ireland's development programme. Regardless of the institutional make-up, what we suggest is most important is the transparency of the meetings and the ability of civil society to know what is on the agenda or to feed into discussions. Ireland's aid policy, One World, One Future, which is currently under review, would have committed to biannual reports by the interdepartmental committee that would be shared with the Oireachtas for discussion and debate. It would be very important going forward, whether for the SDGs or the aid programme, for a report on the whole-of-Government approach and how well Ireland feels it is doing on coherence to be shared with the Oireachtas and this committee.

In regard to the meaningful engagement, while I was not at the high level political forum this year, I attended last year and went to some UN training on voluntary national reviews, given Ireland's voluntary national review was coming up. The UN had to produce guidance on what meaningful engagement of civil society should look like for countries developing their voluntary national reviews. What we saw with Ireland's voluntary national review process would not have lived up to the standards outlined in that guidance in terms of the establishment of a steering committee that included civil society to oversee the production of the report, or of the opportunities for civil society to see and meaningfully comment on a draft of such a report. Ireland showed some good steps in terms of including stakeholder commitments on the website and so on, but we have not lived up to the guideline standards provided by the UN for voluntary national review.