Ms Meaghan Carmody:

The most recent national implementation plan for the SDGs was released in October 2022. There was quite a delay with it. There are a number of gaps in implementation that we have identified. First, the committee shadows the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. Ultimately, that Department is responsible for overall SDG implementation. We believe responsibility for implementation needs to lie with the Department of the Taoiseach in order to demonstrate the overall political leadership that was referenced earlier, which is a real enabler of system change. To date, we have not received a rationale as to why it is housed within the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. We wish to hear why it is not within the Department of the Taoiseach. The well-being unit is in the Department of the Taoiseach. I have already pointed out some of the inconsistencies between that framework and the SDGs. Only one of them has been agreed by all 193 UN member states.

Second, we do not have a functioning mechanism with regard to policy coherence for sustainable development. There is a policy analysis tool for the well-being framework but not for the SDGs. The regulatory impact analyses are a key way to implement this and they are housed in the Department of the Taoiseach. We are seeing some inconsistencies that are hindering overall SDG progress and are key stumbling blocks in that architecture. With regard to monitoring and accountability, it is very positive to see lead Departments named in the most recent policy map from 2022. One will be able to see which ones the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications are responsible for-----