Built on the performance budgeting framework that has been progressively embedded into the budget cycle, Equality Budgeting in Ireland has been developed over recent years with a view to enhancing the role of resource allocation policies in advancing equality, reducing poverty and strengthening economic and social rights. The National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020 also contains a related commitment.
Equality budgeting should not be regarded as something separate from the budget process; the intention is to embed equality perspectives across the whole-of-year budgetary process.
The pilot programme of equality budgeting was introduced for the 2018 budgetary cycle, anchored in the existing performance budgeting framework. Following the achievements of the pilot programme, Equality Budgeting was expanded in 2019 to further develop the gender budgeting elements and to broaden its scope to other dimensions of equality including poverty, socioeconomic inequality and disability.
Responsibility for proofing expenditure programmes, the selection of indicators, and making progress towards achieving the high-level goals articulated remains a matter for the individual line Departments in the first instance. The role of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is to facilitate and advance this initiative and provide support for Departments to clarify and to fulfil their equality-related objectives.
To further guide the rollout of equality budgeting, an Equality Budgeting Expert Advisory Group was established, holding its first meeting in September 2018. This group is comprised of a broad range of relevant stakeholders and policy experts to provide advice on the most effective way to advance equality budgeting policy and progress the initiative.
All public bodies in Ireland have responsibility to promote equality, prevent discrimination and protect the human rights of their employees, customers, service users and everyone affected by their policies and plans. This is a legal obligation, referred to as the Public Sector Equality and Human Rights Duty, and it originates in Section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Act 2014. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) are members of the Expert Advisory group and the Public Sector Duty is reflected in all Equality Budgeting policies as appropriate.
In 2019 my Department, in liaison with the Department of Justice and Equality, commissioned the OECD to undertake a Policy Scan of Equality Budgeting in Ireland. This was published in tandem with Budget 2020. The report reviews Ireland’s equality budgeting programme and provides recommendations on its further development, in light of international experience.
Implementation of the OECD recommendations has already commenced. This work is being informed also by the views of the Equality Budgeting Expert Advisory Group, and work is well underway on the various recommendations in the OECD report.
One example is recommendation 9, which calls for the development of an equality data strategy to further bolster the impact of equality budgeting. Monitoring and reporting from a given dimension of equality is only possible if the necessary disaggregated data is available. With this in mind, the CSO have conducted a data audit to evaluate the quality of existing administrative datasets from an equality perspective. This audit has been guided by a sub-group of the Equality Budgeting Expert Advisory Group, and a report will be published in the coming weeks. Having a comprehensive understanding of the data landscape is a necessary prerequisite to implementing the remaining recommendations of the OECD report.
In the Programme for Government, the Government has also set out its commitment to develop a set of well-being indices to create a well-rounded, holistic view of how Irish society is faring; use these well-being indicators, as well as economic indicators, to highlight inequalities and ensure that policies are driven by a desire to do better by people; and ensure that the well-being framework will be utilised in a systematic way across government policymaking (at local and national levels) in setting budgetary priorities, evaluating programmes and reporting progress (as an important complement to existing economic measurement tools).
The introduction of wellbeing budgeting will also bring a framework, which will inform equality budgeting development to areas of most need, and link departmental action to national and international equality goals, in line with OECD recommendation 1.
At present, officials in my Department are developing the programme of work that will support the Government in meeting this commitment with regard to well-being. This work programme will be progressed on a cross-Governmental basis in liaison with the Department of the Taoiseach, Department of Finance and other government departments as well as key stakeholders and experts in this area.
Once developed, the Government will promote the use of a well-being framework in a systematic way across the spectrum of public policy-making in Ireland, including in setting budgetary priorities, evaluating programmes and reporting on progress. This will be an important complement to existing economic measurement tools that are in place to support well-being and outcomes-based approaches to policy making.
One such existing tool is the ESRI’s SWITCH Model, which will continue to be utilised to help Government understand the impact of proposed reforms on households. Moreover, initiatives such as the Spending Review process, which is a key platform for evidence-informed policy making across the Civil Service, will continue to produce evidence relevant to the wellbeing and outcomes of people, households, businesses and sectors of the economy.
Taken as a whole, a broad range of initiatives are under way to advance the objectives of equality budgeting, deliver on the OECD recommendations step-by-step, and in particular to promote transparency and accountability in reporting across the budget cycle.
