Ms Meaghan Carmody:

I thank the Deputy for his question. The Coalition 2030 and I widely share the concern about the move to the right in the institutions of the European Parliament. To echo what Mr. Donoghue said, the SDGs are the best framework we have at the moment to address and stem the tide of this shift to the right because the two central principles are leaving no one behind and reaching the furthest behind first. I will draw the committee's attention to one organisation and the study it carried out. It is named Earth4All and is led by the Club of Rome. The committee members might know the Club of Rome through its study The Limits to Growth published in the 1970s, which sparked a lot of the conversations on sustainable development. Earth4All's recent study, SGDs for All, which I would be happy to circulate afterwards, shows that inequality reduces trust in institutions. That reduces the capacity of these institutions to engage with citizens in a democratic way to make sure everybody's needs are met and address the move towards insularity and to the right, to put it bluntly.

To articulate what Earth4All has found in its study, it has a very useful slide deck, which I can also circulate, and this shows that well-being is declining globally. Even though in many countries GDP, for example, might be rising, inequality between those who are earning the most and those who are earning the least is increasing in many countries that we would call democracies. Since the 1970s the incomes of CEOs have increased by more than 1,300% in the US while the income of the average worker has increased by only 18%. Inflation over the past few years has also been approximately 18%. This inequality is reducing trust and contributing towards leaving people behind. When we look at the move towards the right, we can see it tracks with this inequality.

What of the future? We will have a number of outcome documents. One of those will be a declaration for future generations and one will be a pact for the future. These are efforts to anticipate what will be coming down the line and to try to ensure everybody's needs will be met. There are global initiatives addressing this and rather than saying the SDGs are not being met and that it is time to move on we need to acknowledge that all UN member states agreed to them and we must hold on fast to them until 2030.