Mr. David Rossiter:

To add to what my colleague said, our coalition has put forward three really practical measures to embed the goals into the Government's delivery. One of them is the budget aspect, as we outlined. When the budget happens each year, we really need to tie the goals and the various indicators of the goals into Government spending. We need to know how X expenditure in the Department of the environment or rural and community development is achieving, for example, SDG No. 7 or target No. 4.8. It is about ensuring the Government puts its money where its mouth is. That is a really important aspect.

In the previous Oireachtas, the Commission for Future Generations Bill 2023 was making its way through the legislative process. First and Second Stages were completed in the Dáil and the Bill was sent to the children's committee. We would love to see that Bill coming back onto the Dáil schedule. It followed a model set out by the Welsh Government, which involved the establishment of a future generations commissioner or ombudsman. In effect, it would be an arms-length body that would offer advice and some policy proposals whereby the Government could look at more long-term decision-making processes. Our coalition has proposed that approach of looking at the SDGs from a proactive point of view. At the moment, trying to achieve the SDGs is a reactive process. If we achieve goal No. 7 or No. 8, say, we put a sticker on it and say we have managed to do that. It is really about taking a proactive approach and the future generations Bill offers a framework to do that.