Mr. Ian Talbot:

I would be happy to. I think I mentioned some of these things in my introduction. It is a bit perplexing. We did a check outside. I do not want to embarrass anybody but we are all wearing these pins. I have three or four, one on every suit. I wear them all the time. I have never had anyone come up to me and say, "Wow, you're supporting sustainable development goals." Lots of people come up to me and say, "What's that?" As it goes back to 2015, it is now nearly ten years later. That lack of awareness is really worrying.

Regarding Ms Karen Ciesielski's point, I thought that as part of the country's commitment to the goals we were supposed to align policy measures. For example, we do that. We are preparing our manifesto. We will have a grid of all the proposals we have and the goals that they actually meet to help profile it. All we are doing is profiling it. We cannot sell that to the media and the public. The media will not be very interested in that grid. That is a big part of the challenge for us. We are doing an awful lot and it can be quite frustrating. That is also why I put in the comment about lethargy and the budget. Unless we are talking about some of the big measures people are listening to, I am not sure there are many other ways.

The number of people who do not know what the local authorities are doing for them is also staggering. We can sometimes all get into our own little bubbles. To Senator O'Reilly's point, we work very closely with local government. Obviously, there are issues in Galway relating to roads and things like that. Generally around the country we are working with local government. They also have a sense of frustration about getting that message through. We could do a better job on things like mentioning the budget. It was not in the budget speech. I think to find any reference at all required going to an appendix of one of the subsidiary reports from the Department of Finance. It is not front and centre in the messages that people are listening to. People are listening very carefully to the messages on carers grants and disabilities. There would have been an opportunity to say that this contributes to the goals of gender equality and stuff. However, we are not making that connection for people.

Unfortunately, I think Government will need to spend some money advertising this and providing stronger messages. I do not know where that should be. Mr. Kiernan has been incredibly supportive in rolling this programme out among our chambers and setting up sustainability councils around the country. What should we do differently as champions or ambassadors? It is a double-edged sword in ways. As a result of the work we are doing, we were nominated as ambassadors. We cannot do much more than we were already doing. It is great to see the involvement of organisations like the GAA. It gets crowds of 80,000 into Croke Park and large crowds into other stadiums such as Pairc Uí Chaoimh. Regarding building up that visibility, there is considerable onus on many people to just talk about these things. There are only five years to go.