Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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35. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the work being carried out in respect of gender equality budgeting; the way in which this will be monitored and inputted into the final programme for the budget; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [21607/18]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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The ongoing work regarding Equality Budgeting in Ireland follows the Programme for a Partnership Government commitment to ‘develop the process of budget and policy proofing as a means of advancing equality, reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights’. The National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020 also contains a related commitment.

The elements that make gender and equality budgeting work such as impact analysis and evaluation are important in any good budgetary process. Gender and equality budgeting should not to be seen as something separate from the budget process, the intention is to embed a gender and equality perspective throughout the budgetary process, with a whole of year budgetary focus.

A pilot programme of equality budgeting for the 2018 budgetary cycle is underway, anchored in the existing performance budgeting framework. International experience has shown the importance of setting specific and measurable targets. This approach works well in terms of transparency around objectives and measuring progress. 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 (REV) 2018 in December last. Progress towards achieving these targets has been reported on in the Public Service Performance Report 2017 published last month.

Responsibility for proofing expenditure programmes, the selection of indicators, and making progress towards achieving the high level goals articulated is a matter for the individual spending Departments in the first instance. The role of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is to facilitate the initiative and provide support for Departments to fulfil the Programme for Government commitment.

The pilot programme of equality budgeting is to be reviewed, with learnings from the pilot approach used to expand the initiative to other expenditure programmes and equality dimensions for the 2019 budgetary cycle. To further guide the roll-out of equality budgeting it is intended to establish an Equality Budgeting Steering Group. This group will be comprised of relevant stakeholders and policy experts to provide advice on the most effective way to advance the initiative.