Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill from Deputy Howlin and Sinn Féin will be supporting it. Ever since the Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, tweeted about leprechaun economics, the use of GDP as a way of measuring our national accounts has come to close to being a laughing stock. The progress made in coming up with GNI*, a unique way of measuring our unique economy, is welcome but ultimately the EU, for example, measures only GDP, GNI and so on. Like GNI*, its impact is only to provide a fuller picture. Legally, in terms of fiscal rules and so on, I do not believe it is designed to have any impact. It is worthwhile, though.

Only a fool thinks the state of a country can be measures in economic figures. Bhutan measures gross national happiness, and why not? We are not quite going that far but this Bill maps out alternative ways of measuring how well or otherwise we are doing. It also touches on equality budgeting, with the National Economic and Social Council being mandated to report annually and every five years on the equality impact of budgets or a series of budgets. There has been, to be fair, a lot of progress in this area with the Department of Finance providing far more detail each year on the breakdown of who benefits and who does not. There are people who are still prone to spin, though, and a more neutral body to carry out this work is a worthwhile suggestion.

Section 2 defines genuine progress indicators. The list is detailed and interesting and I am sure that if we get to Committee Stage, there could be some other suggestions.

Section 3 requires the NESC, working with the CSO, to come up with a way of compiling the necessary statistics. Section 4 relates to the equality budgeting element I already mentioned. Environmental and social sustainability and improvement must accompany economic progress otherwise what is the point?

Deputy Howlin's Bill represents an attempt to put the wisdom of humanity about the nature of what constitutes progress into law and deserves further consideration on Committee Stage. I am happy to support it.

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