Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Committee on European Union Affairs

Sustainable Development Goals: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

On the relatability question, the same thing comes up a lot with climate action. Particularly given that there are only five years left, the goal is not for everyone to know about and understand the SDGs. As we touched on earlier, the abstraction of the SDGs and the process behind them is quite vulnerable to weaponisation in the current online climate but, as my colleague has said, the actual things we are talking about are very hard to be against. To be honest, while those co-ordinating policies should have the SDGs in mind, our communications, our actual action and our mobilisation for action need to be focused on the things that will make a positive difference in people's lives, whether that is housing, transport, cleaner water, cleaner air or renewable electricity. In other parts of the world, the needs are more basic. It is about those things. When you go into them, the SDGs themselves do not do a bad job of translating high-level geopolitics into things that mean something to people's lives. We should focus less on the abstraction of the collective framework and as much as possible on the concrete material deliverables that will improve people's lives.

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