Ms Meaghan Carmody:

I am happy to jump in first on that. I thank Deputy Haughey for his question. If I understand correctly, he is asking what the grounds for optimism are, whether the EU region is best in class on the SDGs and how Ireland is doing.

On optimism, I am joining the meeting from Cardiff, where I am attending the Future Generation Forum hosted by the Welsh future generations commissioner. Yesterday there was an extremely optimistic atmosphere at the forum. More than 50% of the world’s population is under the age of 30. Many countries in the world are young countries. The shift in mindset and in approach to how we deal with problems, for example, moving towards long-termism, cathedral thinking and being a good ancestor, as was described yesterday, is notable. There is a move away from short-termism, short-term political cycles and short-term budgets. There is an understanding of the interconnection between various issues. Given I have worked in this area for a long time, I think optimism is hard to come by, but this area of futures thinking and long-termism is an area of hope.

We need to keep the Summit of the Future in mind. It was first floated in 2021 in the Our Common Agenda report from the UN Secretary General and it is now happening this year. As per one of the recommendations from the co-facilitators, this type of summit should happen every five years. There will likely be a UN special envoy for future generations. We are seeing more and more countries, Ireland included, beginning to think about futures thinking and legislating to ensure that those who are not yet born are taken into consideration in our policies. That is absolutely an area of optimism.

In terms of regions around the world, the Deputy is right. The EU is doing better than most. It is not balanced across the EU, as one might intuit. The northern European countries are doing best in the EU and central and eastern European countries are faring worst, so we need to work towards convergence.

The Deputy’s third question on how Ireland is doing could constitute an entire committee meeting by itself, so I will follow up with specific reports and details. Our approach to how Ireland is doing on SDGs and our position is that we need to measure what matters for Ireland. The CSO’s traffic light assessment of how we are doing on the SDGs says we are achieving no poverty, which is evidently not true for anybody who has two eyes and can engage with the world around them. We need a set of indicators that are contextually relevant for Ireland, and this is not unheard of. Many countries have done this and have taken the SDGs and made them nationally relevant. Wales is one example. Finland and the Netherlands are doing great work. There are plenty more examples.

If the Deputy has specific questions on how Ireland is doing, I am be happy to answer them. However, I am conscious that I do not want to get into the weeds if this committee is to talk about the EU. I am happy to answer any specifics and I will send the Deputy some documents after the meeting.