Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 September 2023
152. Deputy Thomas Pringle asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform whether his Department is in the process of carrying out gender and equality proofing of expenditure proposals as part of this year's budgetary process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40878/23]
View answerWhile the development of sector-specific policy proposals and assessment of the likely equality impacts of these are a matter for the Department with responsibility for a given area, 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 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. The most recent Public Service Performance Report, which presents data from 2022, was published in June 2023 and is available on the Department’s website.
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.
Equality Budgeting is one of a number of processes 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 work of Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (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.
