Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The ongoing work on equality budgeting in Ireland follows the commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government to "develop the process of budget and policy proofing as a means of advancing equality, reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights". Following this programme for Government commitment and in order to facilitate a more comprehensive assessment of the impact of budget measures on household living standards, my Department has undertaken initial work in the area of social impact assessment. The social impact assessment framework is defined as an evidence-based methodology which attempts to assess the impact of policy on households' financial positions. The objective of the framework is to broaden the scope of current practice to take account not only of tax and social welfare measures but also of how changes in public expenditure policy can impact on household outcomes and living standards. By doing so it may in the future be possible to compare the distributional impact of changes to various types of public service spending and the implications for household outcomes.

Following the announcement on budget day in October 2017, alongside the publication of the paper Equality Budgeting: Proposed Next Steps in Ireland, a pilot programme of equality budgeting for the 2018 budgetary cycle is under way, anchored in the existing performance budgeting framework. For this first cycle of equality budgeting, a number of policy areas have been selected, including making childcare more affordable to reduce barriers to women's participation in the labour market and increasing female participation in apprenticeships. Associated objectives and indicators were published in the Revised Estimates Volume last December and progress towards achieving these targets has been reported in the public service performance report for 2017 which we published just last month.

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