Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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207. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if an equality budgeting statement will be forthcoming in Budget 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38629/22]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Equality Budgeting in Ireland has been progressively developed over recent years with a view to enhancing the role of resource allocation policies in advancing equality, reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights.

Equality objectives and indicators are published every year in the Revised Estimates Volume (REV) and the Public Service Performance Report. All government departments report Equality Budgeting indicators, with 26 metrics published in the latest Public Service Performance Budgeting Report published in May 2022. REV 2023 will continue this process.

More generally, the Equality Budgeting agenda is being progressively developed:

- An Expert Advisory Group was established to guide development of Equality Budgeting policy, and has met regularly since 2018. To further support the implementation of Equality Budgeting across all Departments, in March of this year, the Government agreed to the establishment of an Inter-departmental Group on Equality Budgeting.

- In 2019, my Department commissioned the OECD to undertake a Policy Scan of Equality Budgeting in Ireland. This was published in tandem with Budget 2020. The report reviews Ireland’s equality budgeting programme and provides recommendations on its further development, in light of international experience.

- In line with the OECD recommendation to develop an equality data strategy, the CSO completed a data audit in cooperation with my Department, to ascertain the availability of public service data that is disaggregated by equality dimension. A report on this audit was published in October 2020.

- The OECD Policy Scan also raised the issue of an Equality Budgeting Statement. In light of the recent developments in the area outlined above, my Department is reviewing the different approaches to Gender Budgeting statements published by other OECD countries. The timing of publication, and the level of detail, vary greatly across OECD countries. This work will be used to inform future developments in this area taking into account: the level of detail in relation to Equality Budgeting currently published including in the REV and Public Service Performance Report; analysis published as part of the Spending Review process. Existing tools such as the ESRI’s SWITCH Model; and linkages with the development of the Well-being Framework. In particular, this work will need to reflect that the approach to date with Equality Budgeting has been to embed equality perspectives across the whole-of-year budgetary process by setting out targets in the REV and reporting on performance versus targets in the Public Service Performance Report, with analyses such as Social Impact Assessments also supporting this whole-of-year approach.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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208. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the status of progress of a well-being budgeting framework; if the framework is set to be included in budget 2023; if not, the expected timeline for completion and operationalisation of this well-being budget framework; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38630/22]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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In Programme for Government – Our Shared Future, the Government set out a commitment to developing a set of well-being indices to create a well-rounded, holistic view of how Irish society is faring. In July 2021, the Government published an initial report, First Report on a Well-being Framework for Ireland, that set out an initial multi-dimensional well-being framework. The overarching vision of the Well-being Framework for Irelandis “enabling all our people to live fulfilled lives now and into the future”. In June 2022, the Government published a second report, Understanding Life in Ireland: The Well-being Framework, that builds on the initial report by taking account of the contributions to a public consultation and further research. Since autumn 2021, the CSO has hosted an interactive dashboard that flows from the conceptual framework and uses a cohesive set of indicators to measure life and progress in Ireland.

The Government is also committed to ensuring that the well-being framework is utilised in a systematic way across government policy making in evaluating programmes and reporting progress as well as in setting budgetary priorities (as an important complement to existing economic measurement tools).

As the budgetary process is a whole-of-year process, the well-being initiative is being developed in a way that seeks to inform this process as a whole.

Already, the use of a well-being perspective has been evident at the National Economic Dialogue. Over the course of the last couple of years, I have chaired breakout sessions that have been informed by a well-being perspective. This has provided participants with an opportunity to consider longer-term economic, social and environmental factors as part of their discussions of budgetary prioritisation.

Departments have been invited to consider how they might utilise the Well-being Framework as part of the Spending Review process. This is part of a wider effort to progress the use of the Well-being Framework as part of the policy process.

Finally, as noted in the Expenditure Report 2022, and subsequently in Understanding Life in Ireland: The Well-being Framework, the next phase of the Department of Public Expenditure & Reform's work in this area is to develop an approach to associating public expenditure with the various dimensions of the Well-being Framework. The intention is to develop over time a way of setting out budgetary decisions on the basis of well-being dimensions; an approach that would complement the existing Vote Group approach to presenting such decisions.