Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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823. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the progress made by her Department in respect of targets and goals set out in sustainable development goals of the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development under the policy remit of her Department; and if these targets and goals will be met by their respective deadlines. [12910/23]

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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In Ireland, a whole-of-Government approach has been adopted for implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with each Minister having specific responsibility for implementing individual SDG targets related to their Ministerial functions.

The Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications has overall responsibility for promoting the SDGs and overseeing their coherent implementation across Government, including the development of the National Implementation Plans and reporting frameworks.

The SDG National Implementation Plan 2022 – 2024 was published on www.gov.ie in October 2022. A Policy Map was also published that sets out which Department leads on the delivery of each of the 169 targets. My Department is identified as the lead Department in relation to five specific targets under three separate goals. My officials recently attended the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands to update on progress in implementation of our SDG targets.

Under Goal 1, which relates to poverty, my Department leads on targets 1.2 and 1.3.

Target 1.2 relates to reducing poverty as nationally defined. In Ireland, the national social target for poverty reduction is to reduce consistent poverty to 2 per cent or less. In the 2020 survey, the rate of consistent poverty was 4.7 per cent. This reduced to 4 per cent in the 2021 survey and increased to 5.3 per cent in the 2022 survey. While it is disappointing to see this increase in the consistent poverty rate, as it had been steadily declining since it peaked at 9 per cent in the 2013 survey, some caution must be exercised in interpreting the figure as it is based on 2021 income, a period when the Covid pandemic significantly impacted incomes. In addition, measures from Budgets 2022 and 2023 are not reflected in the incomes data.

In terms of Target 1.3, which 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 the 2022 survey, the at risk of poverty rate before social transfers would have been 36.5 per cent. After social transfers, it was 13.1 per cent, which is a poverty reduction impact of 64 per cent.

Related to this is Target 10.1, which is to increase the incomes of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a higher rate than the national average. In this regard, the 2020 SILC found that the bottom 40 per cent of the population had a 22.69 per cent share of equivalised income. This increased to a 22.85 per cent share in the 2022 survey, which represents an increase in income. The data demonstrates that those in the bottom 40 per cent of the income distribution experienced higher levels of income growth than the national average.

In terms of Goal 8, which relates to employment, my Department is the lead on Target 8.6 which is to substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training. There was a sharp increase in 2020 in this rate with the onset of the pandemic. However, there has been a steep decline from the beginning of 2021, a trend which has continued. Ireland’s rate is now well below the European average standing at 6.8 percent and 8.4 percent at Q3 2022 for 15 – 24 year olds and 15 – 29 year olds respectively (compared to EU averages of 9.3 per cent and 11.4 per cent EU respectively).

Finally, my Department is also the co-lead on Target 8b 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, many of which have been delivered. This includes extending the JobsPlus financial incentive to employers recruiting jobseekers under the age of 30; job fairs with a focus on young people who are unemployed; and implementing the EU Reinforced Youth Guarantee so that it applies to young people under the age of 30. In this regard, the latest Labour Force Survey for Q4, 2022 reports a youth unemployment rate of 9.1 per cent, which is well below the pre-pandemic average of 12.5 per cent.