Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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122. To ask the Taoiseach the status of the well-being framework and dashboard; his plans to include the distribution of both pre-tax and post-tax income and wealth and Gini coefficient within the income and wealth dimension of the proposed well-being dashboard; and his plans to include measures for the security of employment, trade union density and collective bargaining coverage and work-life balance within the work and job quality dimension. [56110/21]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Ireland’s Well-being Framework is the result of a Programme for Government commitment to develop a set of well-being indices to create a well-rounded, holistic view of how Irish society is faring.

A , including a dashboard of indicators, was approved by Government in June of this year and published in July. It was informed involving stakeholders and experts in the area.

The Government’s Report committed to a second phase of consultation on the Framework to gain feedback. It also committed to specific areas for further research and consideration, a phased approach to addressing data gaps, and a pathway for integrating the framework into policy making over time. A follow up report will be submitted to Government in 2022.

A ‘Public Conversation’ on the well-being initiative was launched on the 26th of October. As part of this, a was developed. This is supported by CSO’s interactive dashboard hosted on its , which was also launched on the 26th.

The indicators for the Well-being Dashboard are hosted by the CSO on its . One fundamental design principle of the dashboard is non-complexity, and therefore the number of indicators was limited to approximately three per dimension. Indicators were chosen based on a clear set of criteria (as set out in the Governments first report), and in consultation with the CSO and the Inter-Departmental Working Group on a Well-being Framework. The outputs (e.g. trends and international comparisons) had no influence on selection. Each chosen indicator is disaggregated to explore inequality across groups. The cohorts chosen for disaggregation are based on existing research, consultation across Government and with experts in the field, and data availability.

The dashboard is necessarily based on available data and will improve over time as data gaps are progressively addressed. As evidenced internationally, fully developing a Well-being Framework and related data improvements are considerable pieces of work and will require significant time and resources.

The indicators for the Income and Wealth dimension are:

- Median real household disposable income, disaggregated by Principal Economic Status of head of household and household composition;

- Median household net wealth, disaggregated by tenure status and household composition;

- Households making ends meet with great difficulty, disaggregated by household composition and household disposable income quintile.

The indicators for the Work and Job Quality dimension are:

- Labour Underutilisation Rate, disaggregated by sex and age group;

- Employment Rate, disaggregated by sex and age group;

- Mean Weekly Earnings, disaggregated by sex, nationality and age group.

The indicators for the Time Use dimension, which deals explicitly with work-life balance (alongside general time use) are:

- Long Working Hours in Main Job, disaggregated by sex, NACE economic sector and age group;

- Carers providing at Least 20 Hours Care per Week, disaggregated by sex, age group and level of disadvantage;

- Population satisfied with Time Use, disaggregated by sex and household composition