Ms Hannah Gilmartin:

It is lovely to join the committee today, albeit virtually. I work in the sustainable development goals unit. Some 92% of SDG targets overlap with human rights. Recently, in October, we published a new national implementation plan for the sustainable development goals. A key objective will be to look at that overlap between SDGs and the UNCRPD to see how we can use both together.

Policy proofing was mentioned. SDGs provide a strong framework that we hope to better use in future across government as part of a national policy framework. Strategic objective 1 in our national implementation plan is to better incorporate SDGs into the work of Departments. We see a key component of that as making sure the framework is being used by policymakers to inform their work. SDG 10.3 is about reducing inequality of outcome in policy. That SDG target should apply to all national policymakers and be taken into account by them. We recently commenced a dialogue on the principle of leaving no one behind. We held our national stakeholder forum meeting in January.

The focus of the meeting was to come up with a shared understanding of what it means to leave no one behind in an Irish context and developing recommendations for policymakers to take into account when developing policy to better ensure they do not leave people behind. That dialogue has commenced and is ongoing. We are very much aware of different groups we are trying to reach in terms of these conversations and stakeholder forum meetings. We have now set up a forum committee with a representative from a DPO on it. A key objective of ours going forward is that our engagement mechanisms are accessible and inclusive. We have taken a number of steps to ensure that. I would be happy to talk about that further if it is of interest.

As part of that conversation, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development calls for the empowerment of certain key groups, including persons with disabilities. This list was brought to the stakeholder forum back in January to review and discuss whether we think that list is relevant to the Irish context. We have a few additions to the list for the Irish context. First, we are changing the wording to "disabled people", rather than "persons with disabilities". We are adding people who are living with long-term health issues and people who are living with mental health issues or are affected by addiction or both. Really, what we are trying to do at the moment is to bring together different strands of work across Government to create this framework that policymakers can use going forward to inform their work. It is a big undertaking and we will be working with colleagues across Departments, including the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, which is the national lead on disability policy and the national point of contact for the UNCRPD but it is a work in progress and we are very keen to work with DPOs going forward as part of that work. We have commenced that already and it is proving very fruitful.