Mr. James Kiernan:

We welcome the national implementation plan, late as it was in arriving. It gives focus to regional goals for the SDGs, but there was one limiting factor in that there was not enough talk in the plan about resourcing to reach the goals and many targets. We would welcome resourcing to support us as we reach the targets. There are many ambitious ways of doing it, but how will they be sufficiently resourced? We wish to see more resourcing in the Department and for the SDG forum, which is driving much of the implementation in many areas in it. We are a member of that forum, along with many organisations and colleagues in that space. We see that as the main omission. Another area is that of a standardised reporting system to see where businesses in our organisation in particular - we have more than 8,000 members - can engage with the SDGs to see how they are doing on them. We see much about environmental, social and governance, ESG, goals at present. ESG is a topic on which many companies engaging, but they are very large companies. We wish to see smaller businesses engage on reporting around sustainability. However, there are many different reporting mechanisms at present. We wish to see Government support one that it sees as a benefit to businesses in the area. We would have our opinions on that, as well, but the lack of resourcing in the plan is a particular issue.