Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am taking the debate on behalf of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe.

I welcome the opportunity to address the House on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight report on gender budgeting. In the past two years, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has been working to advance equality budgeting, and the committee’s report on gender budgeting contributes to progressing this important work.

Gender and equality budgeting has been a significant part of the committee’s work programme, and the report makes ten recommendations in this regard.

The ongoing work facilitated by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform regarding gender and equality budgeting continues to address many of the report’s recommendations and demonstrates the Government’s commitment to build on the equality budgeting initiative. The Government’s work regarding equality budgeting stems from a 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".

Equality budgeting involves providing greater information on the likely impacts of proposed and-or ongoing budgetary measures, which, in turn, enhance the potential to better facilitate the integration of equality concerns into the budgetary process and enhance the Government’s decision-making framework. While inequality is traditionally viewed through the prism of economic inequality alone, equality budgeting goes further in identifying contrasting outcomes in areas such as health and education, and how these outcomes differ across gender, age, ethnicity and those other characteristics which distinguish our society’s cohorts.

In 2017, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform announced details of the equality budgeting pilot programme for the 2018 budgetary cycle. This pilot, which is anchored in the existing performance budgeting framework, is currently under way. For this first cycle of equality budgeting, a number of diverse policy areas have been selected, with associated objectives and indicators published in the Revised Estimates Volume 2018 last December. Six streams were identified, with five of those focusing on gender. Progress towards achieving these targets was reported on in the public service performance report published in April.

The committee’s report recommends that the gender budgeting focus of the equality budgeting pilot be expanded to other equality dimensions. The Minister outlined in his Budget Statement last week the commitment to advancing equality budgeting and expanding the initiative to other dimensions of equality, including socioeconomic inequality.

I recognise that getting a wide range of opinions is crucial to progress this work effectively. To support this expansion, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has established an equality budgeting expert advisory group, including representatives from the National Economic and Social Council, the Central Statistics Office, the National Women’s Council of Ireland, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, the ESRI and academia, as well as the Departments of Finance, Justice and Equality and Employment Affairs and Social Protection. This group will provide expert knowledge and advice on the most effective way to advance equality budgeting policy and progress the initiative.

Strong stakeholder engagement remains central to the work regarding gender and equality budgeting. The expert advisory group has a significant role in this, as does the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform continues to liaise closely with key stakeholders.

In developing Irish equality budgeting policy we also looked at international best practice. A number of countries have begun to develop frameworks in this area. The Austrian, Scottish, Icelandic and Canadian models, among others, were examined. Although many of these approaches are relatively new, it is useful to see the methodology and common themes that have been adopted.

The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is currently working closely with a number of line Departments to identify new measures for the 2019 phase of equality budgeting. As I said earlier, we are building on the gender dimension and expanding to other areas, including socioeconomic inequality.

This is in parallel to other more long-term work. As outlined in the committee’s report, there is a need systematically to identify and record relevant data gaps. The ongoing work of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in areas such as performance budgeting and the spending review seeks to address the issue of gaps in relation to data on the outputs and outcomes of public expenditure.

Awareness and implementation of equality budgeting is also key in order to refine and improve the selected indicators as outlined in the committee’s report. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform continues to work closely with line Departments and will undertake awareness-raising measures to maximise the application and impact of equality budgeting policy.

There are a number of established practices and procedures in place in Ireland that facilitate the consideration of likely equality impacts on proposed and-or ongoing budgetary processes and measures. These include distributional analysis where the Departments of Finance and Employment Affairs and Social Protection carry out an ex post impact assessment of the main tax and social welfare measures introduced in any budget. The development of a social impact assessment, SIA, framework has taken place, which is designed to focus on policy areas that cannot easily be incorporated into the existing SWITCH model, specifically the impacts of public expenditure on recipient households. The framework allows evaluators assess how changes in public expenditure policy can impact on household incomes and living standards. Seven papers have been published under the SIA series to date, five of which were published on budget day, including on female labour force participation and targeted childcare supports.

The introduction of equality budgeting has highlighted many issues and identified many areas which need further work. In this regard, and in line with the recommendations in the report, I look forward to working with the committee in further developing gender and equality budgeting.

I thank Deputy Lahart for presenting the report. In respect of his comments on the issues that need to be drawn to the attention of the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, I commit to doing that as well.

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