Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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I thank the committee for its indulgence. I am not a member but, as the Chair knows, the SDGs are one of my hobby horses. I thank Senator O'Reilly for giving me the opportunity to contribute.

It is a positive that committees have begun to step up when it comes to SDG implementation. The Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands had a session on it and the Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, of which Senator O'Reilly and I are members, has it on its work programme. As the committee shadowing the Department that has lead responsibility for the implementation of the SDGs, this committee has an especially important role, not just within the SDGs that would be an obvious fit for this committee, such as those with regard to climate action, life on land or below water, or clean water, but for the full policy suite of the 17 SDGs.

I take this opportunity to compliment Chambers Ireland. It might not have been the quarter where I expected to see the best-quality work on the practical implementation of the SDGs. Chamber Ireland's toolkit is absolutely exemplary. The work it did in respect of town centres, where it took the first-principles approach of applying the SDGs target by target rather than goal by goal, and drilling down into those 169 targets, was absolutely exemplary.

It is the type of first-principles approach we need to map into all our policy work and not just have this kind of retrospective badging we often get where somebody says "Which of these pleasant little pictures can we put beside a policy directive?" Chambers Ireland really drilled down into this and gave a practical and implementable roadmap to the members of its network. I compliment it on that.

I have any number of questions, but I will restrict myself to five. I am probably looking to take advantage of the Cathaoirleach's leniency a little. Mr. Kiernan has gone into this to some degree. What is his impression of the SDG implementation plan that was issued by the Department and of the policy map that goes with it? While I welcome having those lead Departments involved, it does not break down the difficulty with siloed thinking. My impression is that Departments think they have a responsibility for particular goals and that those are the goals they are going to look at, as opposed to taking a holistic view of the 169 sub-targets, going through them line by line and seeing which ones relate to them. What is the witnesses view of the implementation plan? Clearly, this is the lead committee. In addition, it is the most important committee in terms of a comprehensive overview. What other committees are seen as lead players in taking a comprehensive approach to the SDGs? Agriculture jumps out for me-----