Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. I thank the Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands for its report on the progress being made on the SDGs. Achievement of the SDGs is essential if we are to ensure a sustainable future for all. They address the global and local challenges we face, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. These challenges, if left unaddressed, will impact us all in the coming years and for generations to come. Achieving the SDGs requires collaboration among governments, businesses, civil society and individuals. This work will play out on the macro and micro levels, international on one hand and local on the other.

I will speak on the SDGs as they relate to the local, voluntary and community context and will focus on the work of the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Department of Social Protection on contributing to achieving the SDGs. Community and voluntary organisations are key players at local level in driving positive social change in society and will be important contributors to achieving the SDGs. The Department of Rural and Community Development, in partnership with other Departments, promotes community engagement and works across government to strengthen and build understanding and capacity in local government and the community and voluntary sector in order to support the delivery of current and future SDG national implementation plans.

The partnership between Government and local community structures will be key to achieving the principle set out in the SDGs of leaving no one behind. A key avenue to building social cohesion is encouraging participation and enabling people to have a say in the decisions that will affect their lives. Participation in decision-making leads to community empowerment and a sense of ownership that, if nurtured, can only lead to better outcomes. Accordingly, the high level objectives and actions set out in Sustainable, Inclusive and Empowered Communities, the five-year strategy for the community and voluntary sector, support consultation, inclusion and the participation of communities in public policy and decision-making at all levels, and support the implementation of SDG 4, quality education, SDG 12, responsible consumption and production, SDG 13, climate action, and SDG 16, peace, justice and strong institutions.

The Department of Social Protection also regularly holds formal meetings with stakeholders, including bilateral meetings with the community and voluntary pillar, as well as the pre-budget forum to discuss a broad range of issues. The Department hosts the annual social inclusion forum , which brings together policymakers, service providers and service users, including NGOs, community and voluntary sector groups and representatives of people experiencing poverty and social inclusion, to discuss and debate national policy on poverty and social inclusion. The most recent forum took place in June last year.

Ireland has adopted a whole-of-government approach to implementing the SDGs. Departments are collaborating and working to progress the SDGs through various policies and funding supports. In its report, the committee acknowledges the work of the Department of Rural and Community Development in explicitly incorporating the SDGs across a broad range of policies, including the national social enterprise policy, Our Rural Future, town centre first, Embracing Ireland's Outdoors and Our Living Islands. Each strategic objective in the Our Living Islands document is linked to an SDG, as is the Our Rural Future document. The Department's statement of strategy for 2023 to 2025 includes a commitment to continue to align our polices with the SDG national implementation plan and to place SDGs at the heart of our policies.

Under the national implementation plan, the Department of Social Protection was given lead and stakeholder responsibility for several targets focusing on the areas of social protection, poverty, inequality and employment activation. Under goal 1, which relates to poverty, the Department leads on targets 1.2 and 1.3. Target 1.2 relates to reducing poverty as nationally defined.

3 o’clock

In Ireland, the national social target for poverty reduction as set out in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 is to reduce consistent poverty to 2% or less. In the 2020 survey of income and living conditions, the rate of consistent poverty was 4.7%. This reduced to 4% in the 2021 survey but increased to 5.3% in the 2022 survey. While it is disappointing to see this increase in the consistent poverty rate, as it had been steadily declining since peaking at 9% in the 2013 survey, some caution must be exercised in interpreting the figure as it is based on 2021 income and this was a period when the Covid pandemic had a significant impact on incomes. In addition, the impact of permanent and cost-of-living measures introduced under budgets 2022, 2023 and 2024 are not reflected in the income data. The full impact of the pandemic will not wash through SILC data until the 2024 survey this year.

Target 1.3 relates to implementing social protection systems with substantial coverage of the poor and vulnerable. Ireland continues to have one of the most effective systems of social transfers in the EU in terms of poverty prevention. In 2022 the at risk of poverty rate before social transfers was 36.7%, but this reduced to 13.1% after transfers were included. This represents an overall poverty reduction effect of 64%. Social transfers have an important role in reducing poverty and inequality. Recent budgets have been progressive, with a strong emphasis on supporting the most vulnerable. They have included a mix of increases to weekly payments and supports to assist the most vulnerable with cost-of-living increases. Under goal 10 the Department is responsible for a target of 10.1, which is to increase the incomes of the bottom 40% of the population at a higher rate than the national average. According to 2022 EU SILC data, social transfers reduced income inequality in Ireland from 38.5% to 27.9%, which represents an income inequality reduction of 38%. This is measured by the Gini coefficient. This is the largest reduction in income inequality in the EU27 and was markedly higher than the EU27 average of 17.9%.

Shifting to goal 8, which relates to employment, the Department of Social Protection is the lead on target 8.6, which is to substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training, abbreviated as NEET. There was a sharp increase in this rate in 2020 with the onset of the pandemic. However, Ireland’s NEET rate has reduced considerably in recent years and currently lies well below the European average. The latest Eurostat data for quarter 3 of 2023 records a NEET rate in Ireland of 6.9% for 15- to 24-year-olds and 8.7% for 15- to 29-year-olds. This compares favourably with the EU average NEET rate of 9.1% for 15- to 24-year-olds and 11.2% for 15- to 29-year-olds.

The Department is also the co-lead on target 8.B on developing a youth employment strategy. Pathways to Work 2021-2025, which is the national employment services strategy, contains a number of commitments to support young people into training, education and employment and many of these have been delivered. Of course, we must continue to do more and the committee’s report set out a number of recommendations for consideration by both the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Department of Social Protection on the goals and sub-targets assigned to those Departments as part of the SDG policy map. Departmental responses to those recommendations are currently being finalised and will be submitted to the committee shortly. The SDGs provide us with a blueprint for a more equitable and sustainable world by 2030. They are universally applicable, encouraging all nations to mobilise efforts to end poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change while ensuring no-one is left behind. By achieving full implementation of the SDGs we can create more sustainable communities of the future creating environments that promote greater health and well-being for all individuals contributing to an overall better quality of life for all while minimising environmental impact and enhancing social inclusion.

I will leave it at that for now, but I will pick up Deputy Ó Cathasaigh’s issues and any other issues raised in my closing statement.

See this speech in context