Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 11 July 2023
230. Deputy Neasa Hourigan asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform the methodologies his Department will utilise within this year's budgetary process to ensure equality proofing of budgetary policies; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33698/23]
View answerIreland recently hosted a meeting of the OECD Senior Budget Officials Network on Gender Budgeting. This group meets annually to discuss developments and share good practices in relation to gender budgeting and has been a key resource to the development of Irish Equality Budgeting policy. Officials from the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform and from the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Inclusion and Youth, have actively participated in the Gender Budgeting Network since its inception.
The Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform is leading the development of a range of initiatives to enhance the level of transparency and accountability about the use of public funds through the use of Performance Budgeting. A central pillar of this is the work we are engaged in since 2017 in collaboration with all Government Departments on the development of Equality Budgeting.
Two key outputs of this process each year are the Revised Estimates Volume for the Public Services (the REV), and the Public Service Performance Report. The REV contains information on equality budgeting objectives and performance indicators from all Government Departments, and sets out targets for each of these metrics for the upcoming year. The Public Service Performance Report contains detailed information on performance against these targets, as well as trends in impact indicators over a three-year window. It also provides an update on progress towards the achievement of equality budgeting targets in the current year, which adds an important forward looking element to the reporting of results for the previous year.
We have also begun work to develop how we track public expenditure directed at improving equality outcomes, which builds on the pilot project undertaken in 2022 to develop a method of integrating expenditure tagging into the budgetary process. At present we are working with stakeholders, including the Equality Budgeting Expert Advisory Group, and the Equality Budgeting Interdepartmental Network, to refine and implement this over the course of 2023 and 2024. This is part of a wider piece of work that also encompasses well-being and climate-related spending, which will allow for mapping of expenditure across Government by the type of outcomes it is intended to bring about, and the type of inequality it is designed to address.
In addition, we are working with the Central Statistics Office and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to contribute to the development of the National Equality Data Strategy 2023-2027 for improving the collection, disaggregation and use of equality data.
Performance Budgeting is one of a number of processes and frameworks intended to enhance our policy making process, and to improve our understanding of how new or existing measures impact different groups within society. This also includes the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES) that is led by my Department, with IGEES Units spread across the civil service, and also the Spending Review process designed to advance evidence-informed policy making and the assessment of the effectiveness of public expenditure in meeting policy objectives.
The focus of the work done within the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform, therefore, is to put in place a robust performance and equality budgeting framework and support the development of evidence-informed policy making in a way that improves transparency and accountability, and provides valuable insights into public service performance for all stakeholders, including citizens, representative groups, public service bodies and the Oireachtas.
