Ms Hannah Gilmartin:

The Deputy's first question was on the effectiveness of assigning lead Departments to SDG targets and whether this potentially allows Departments to sidestep their responsibility for other SDG targets. The thinking is very much that assigning lead Departments to SDG targets promotes ownership of at least those targets. What we are now doing is further promoting discussion on the idea that a Department's policy or strategy does not just contribute to its own targets but to a wide range of them. There is a piece around mapping all of the targets. The tool will help us to do this. As part of the voluntary national review, we have also mapped 12 other national policies so we are getting a bigger picture as we go. The intention is to continue mapping policies. We can then get a high-level picture of which targets are being progressed by which policies. This will allow for a better assessment of how targets are being progressed and who is contributing to them. Assigning lead Departments is still important, however. It provides clarity and a contact point for stakeholders, something which is set out in the SDG policy map. When we are looking for updates on targets, the lead Department will take the co-ordinating role and liaise with the stakeholder Departments. It allows for a certain level of responsibility away from one centralised team. Other Departments are taking responsibility.

The Deputy's second question was on the voluntary national review and how open and transparent our report will be.

Ireland was praised for being very open and transparent in its first report in 2018, and we very much hope to replicate that. We have invited key stakeholder groups to submit their own assessment of how we are doing, and they will be included in the official report. We have asked the UN youth delegates to draft a chapter for inclusion in the report. We are very much taking a collaborative and inclusive approach to the VNR. We are working on the theme of building back better while leaving no one behind, and leaving no one behind is a key principle of the SDGs. At our next SDG national stakeholder forum in April the draft report will be open for consultation, and we will capture the views of stakeholders and incorporate them in the report. It is very much an open process and we are not trying to sugar-coat things. There will be a high-level data chapter that outlines how we are doing, which will be linked to more in depth online data. Again, that is very black and white and we are being very open about how we are doing.

On the SDG assessment tool, we only recently piloted it at the end of last year. This year we are starting to roll it out across Departments. There is real potential there for use in terms of the local authority climate action plans. The advantage of the tool is that people using it do not have to have an expertise in the area of SDGs. They only need to know their own policy area. It would be of real advantage. We will meet our interdepartmental working group, IDWG, next week specifically to talk through the tool and possible uses. I can definitely raise the Deputy's query then. I think that is all of the questions.