Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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347. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the status of progress made with establishing an institutional framework for implementation and reporting with regard to the sustainable development goals in conjunction with the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. [19658/16]

Charles Flanagan (Laois, Fine Gael)
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The 2030 Agenda, and its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was adopted by world leaders at the UN Summit in New York last September. It provides the framework for sustainable development globally, with universal application. My Department is engaging with the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government to establish the most appropriate institutional arrangements for implementation, monitoring and review of the (SDGs) at national, regional and global levels. This work includes consideration of the adequacy of existing governance mechanisms across Departments, based on the objective of achieving efficiency and effectiveness, coherence and inclusion.

We are also working with the Central Statistics Office which will perform a key role as part of the implementation framework and will support the development of national objectives and indicators that best align with the SDGs. Given that effective implementation of the 2030 Agenda at national level will require a broad and integrated domestic policy response across the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development, the national implementation framework will need to provide for coordinated engagement across Government as well as outreach to a broad group of stakeholders.

At the global level, Ireland’s implementation of the SDGs also requires my Department to ensure that Irish Aid, in its programming and policy, supports the achievement of the Goals in developing countries. Ireland’s aid programme, which is central to our foreign policy, will continue to focus on ending poverty and hunger in some of the poorest countries in the world, notably in sub-Saharan Africa.