Ms Trudy Duffy:

I thank the Deputy very much. In July 2023, we received a request from the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to start looking at the SDGs. Obviously, as a Department, we are involved in the delivery of a number of the SDGs at the moment in terms of the participation rate of youths and adults in formal and non-formal education, the proportion of the population achieving fixed proficiency in literacy and numeracy skills and persons aged 25 to 60 who are over the third level education qualification. We are, therefore, already reporting and prepared to report on some of those metrics.

We are on the interdepartmental group on well-being and we are well positioned, once we are asked by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, to move on reporting on those areas. At the moment, we are reporting to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, on the lifelong learning rates and the research and development personnel.

In terms of green budgeting, again, our finance unit has started tagging our subheads in their applicability for green budgeting. We also have indicators in general inclusion. What we are doing at the moment is conducting a full review of all our indicators across the Department. We are actually looking at what we are reporting on at the moment, whether we are reporting on just outputs or on the value we get in terms of the actual impacts. We are conducting that review at the moment. We hope it will be finished in time for the Revised Estimates Volume, REV, discussion this year.