Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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153. To ask the Minister for Finance if, in light of the Taoiseach’s plans to organise a half-day seminar to review the outcome of the Wellbeing Framework, led by the Department of the Taoiseach, his Department has considered creating an additional dimension within the Wellbeing Framework dealing with language and culture, as has been done in New Zealand and Wales; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29887/23]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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An overriding objective of the Programme for Governmentis to improve the well-being of Irish society. To that end, the Programme specifically commits to incorporating a well-being perspective into our policy-making system by developing a set of well-being indices to complement existing economic measures and by assessing these well-being measures to provide a holistic view of how Irish society is faring.

Over the last two years, we have continued to integrate a well-being perspective into policy-making, including through the budget cycle. Efforts include well-being considerations featuring at the National Economic Dialogue, in the Summer Economic Statementand in the budget day documentation, including the Department’s Beyond GDP – A Quality of Life Assessmentpublication.

In addition, Understanding Life in Ireland: The Well-being Framework 2023was published earlier this month, providing a positive picture across ten of the eleven well-being dimensions, and across twenty-seven of the thirty-five well-being indicators. The report highlights the social progress being made, while also identifying areas that require further work to build a more sustainable economy and inclusive society.

In terms of developing our approach further, we have committed to a full, formal review of the Framework in approximately four years. This allows us to get a clear understanding of how the dashboard is performing over time, and assess potential changes to existing indicators. It will be critical that the Framework remains true to its underlying principles of accessibility, prioritisation, and low complexity. This necessitates limiting the number of well-being dimensions and indicators.

In the interim, we continue to monitor, identify, and develop data to inform the formal review. While culture and the Irish language are included explicitly in the conceptual framework developed for the well-being initiative, an appropriate indicator could not be identified when the dashboard was developed in 2021. I understand that new data on cultural activities will be available from the CSO later this year.

We also continue to engage with a range of stakeholders on the Framework. This includes a recent technical briefing on the 2023 Well-being Analysis and the half-day seminar which will be held later this year. The seminar will discuss progress to date, consider the next steps in integrating well-being considerations into decision-making, and review other countries’ experiences.