Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 1 March 2022
117. Deputy Steven Matthews asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the position regarding the implementation of well-being budgets and their use in Budget 2023; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9711/22]
View answerIn 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 fairing. Once developed, the Government is committed to ensuring that this is used in a systematic way in setting budgetary priorities, as an important complement to existing economic measurement tools, as well as across government policy making at local and national levels in evaluating programmes and reporting progress.
In terms of setting out an overall well-being framework, in July 2021, the Government published the First Report on a Well-being Framework for Ireland. The Report sets out an overarching vision of the Well-being Framework: enabling all our people to live fulfilled lives now and into the future. Since October 2021, the Central Statistics Office has hosted an interactive dashboard of well-being indicators.
As noted in the Expenditure Report 2022, the next phase of the Department of Public Expenditure & Reform's work in this area is to develop an approach for 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.
Furthermore, as part of the whole-of-year budgetary process, Departments have been invited to consider how they might utilise the Well-being Framework as part of the Spending Review process.
