Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 26 October 2023
45. Deputy Pauline Tully asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform what action he and his Department have taken to expand the equality budgeting initiative; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47000/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraSince it was first introduced in 2018, my Department has sought to continually develop the equality budgeting framework in Ireland and embed it within the annual budgetary process. Each annual cycle presents an opportunity to refine and improve the quality and coverage of equality budgeting metrics, and to enhance the level of transparency and accountability about how public resources are being used to tackle inequalities across a broad range of areas.
The two key annual outputs of the equality budgeting calendar are the Revised Estimates Volume for the Public Services (the REV), and the Public Service Performance Report (PSPR). The REV contains information on the equality outputs and outcomes that each Department sets out to achieve in the year ahead. The PSPR provides information on how each Department fared in the achievement of these REV targets for the preceding year.
Work is ongoing across all Departments to improve monitoring and oversight of public expenditure to address inequalities, with the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform providing support and guidance on an ongoing basis. All Government Departments have submitted at least one set of metrics in the latest PSPR, published in June this year. Departments continue to review and add equality metrics to strengthen reporting, with 31 sets of Equality Budgeting metrics in this latest report.
During quarter 2 this year, the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform led a cross-departmental budget tagging exercise to code expenditure subheads that are designed to address inequalities, which will help improve how we monitor equality-related expenditure from a whole of Government perspective. This work continues to be progressed, with the aim of integrating equality budget tagging for all voted expenditure in 2024.
To continue progress in embedding Equality Budgeting across all Government Departments, my Department, along with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, co-chairs the Inter-Departmental Network on Equality Budgeting, on which all Departments are represented. My Department also chairs the Equality Budgeting Expert Advisory Group set up to guide the overall approach to equality budgeting.
Continuous engagement internationally is key to keeping abreast of developments on Equality Budgeting, and in June of this year D/PENDR successfully hosted the annual meeting of the OECD Senior Officials Network on Gender Budgeting. The Department also continued to progress the Irish work stream of the EU Technical Support Initiative 2022 flagship programme on gender mainstreaming and budgeting, which afforded officials training in international practice in regards gender budgeting.
