Ms Karen Egan:

We have two new members joining the team at the SDG unit shortly. There has been an acknowledgment that additional resources are required, so the team is expanding. We have been doing a lot of work on ensuring our departmental points of contact across all Government Departments are playing a more proactive roles as well. We have seen a U-turn. There is a huge amount of work and effort going in across Government Departments, so it is not just falling to one small unit.

On the budgetary process, I know we are saying that we will not be incorporating the SDGs until January, but there will be a lot of steps taken until that point. It is not that we are sitting waiting until January. We are working with Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on this at the moment. We are carrying out the relevant research and talking to relevant European counterparts in respect of how they have done it, and what would suit our context. The Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform is working with the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, OGCIO, which is the information technology department, to develop a tagging system. I suppose that is what will have to go through all the budget lines in the Vote, that is, to tag the SDGs. That will be a big operation, but it will carry through annually then. There are quite a few steps to be taken before we can roll it out at the beginning of next year.

It is not that the work is not being done; it is just that we are taking the preliminary steps so that we can roll it out effectively. We would prefer to roll it out correctly rather than rush it, and then have to go back and amend it. That can cause a lot of confusion.