Our key asks

SDGs housed in the Department of An Taoiseach

With such a short timeframe remaining to achieve the SDGs, it is imperative that ultimate responsibility for overall SDG achievement rests with the Department of the Taoiseach. This would facilitate stronger political backing, buy-in across all other departments, and increased coherence (‘joined-up thinking’) in policy-making across Government.

Timely, participatory, and fit-for-purpose SDG National Implementation Plans

It’s crucial that we have timely and participatory National Implementation Plans for the SDGs created which communicate to the public how the government intends to achieve the SDGs while leaving no one behind. The last National Implementation Plan expired in 2020 and the next was published in October 2022, meaning that there was a sizeable gap where Ireland had no SDG plan in place. These National Implementation Plans must be fully resourced financially and in terms of staff.

That all parties and Government departments use the SDGs as a framework for policy-making

March 2023 will mark the halfway point between when the SDGs were agreed and when they are due to be achieved. It is time we went beyond awareness raising and start instead to use the SDGs as an enabling tool for policy-making that can assist policy-makers to frame their thinking and ascertain where unacceptable trade-offs between SDGs are being made in the act of making policy. The SDGs should be used as a tool for framing all strategies and plans produced by all parties and the Government. For example, education strategies should take all SDG targets into account, ensuring for example that our national strategy on education promotes life-long and life-wide education, rather than merely seeing education as within the remit of schools.

Inclusive, accessible dedicated SDG National Stakeholder Forums

Despite the fact that the inclusion of a dedicated Forum for stakeholders is laudable, in practice it is clear that so far, it has not been used to its potential. The NSF should be co-created with the stakeholders, genuinely participatory, and accessible across all sectors and populations.

Genuine partnership echoes SDG 17 and also moves away from a staid process of mere consultation of stakeholders with minimal follow-up, nor one-directional informing from Government to stakeholders. The Government’s plan for stakeholder analysis and identification should embody the principles to ‘Leave No One Behind’ and ‘target the furthest behind first’, which are fundamental to the SDGs.

We are pleased to note the creation of a dedicated NSF Stakeholder Steering Committee for this Forum and we want to see this Committee fully resourced and supported so that it can adequately engage stakeholders.

Civil society engagement in the development of Voluntary National Reviews

Voluntary national reviews (VNRs) are a key element of the global follow-up and review of the commitments made in the 2030 Agenda. In October 2018, Together 2030 launched a quick guide for civil society to provide guidance to civil society, national coalitions, and other non-governmental stakeholders on how to engage in these processes.

We will be using this guide to support us as we engage with national policy-makers in preparation for the next Voluntary National Review, due for presentation at the High Level Political Forum in New York in 2023.

You are also welcome to use it to give you an understanding of the actions you can take to ensure that the SDG review process in Ireland is robust and fit for purpose.

Ireland submitted its first Voluntary National Review (VNR) report to the UN High-level Political Forum (HLPF) on the 17th of July 2018. The Irish SDG National Implementation Plan 2018 -2020 committed Government to consult with national stakeholders in the preparation of Ireland's VNR. As part of this commitment, Ireland undertook to forward a Compendium of national stakeholder observations directly to the UN HLPF for inclusion on the Forum's official website. In providing contributions, stakeholders were encouraged to consider and respond to the following three questions:

What are you/your organisation/your sector doing to support achieving the SDGs?
What are your/your organisations key observations related to Ireland's SDG implementation?
What would you/your organisation suggest Ireland do to further enhance SDG implementation?

Learn more about VNRs

Annual reporting to both houses of the Oireachtas, underpinned by strong data collection

Without knowing where we are, how can we know what we need to improve? Existing reporting mechanisms for tracking the achievement of the SDGs need to be significantly improved. In order to bring the country along in achieving the transformative programme of Agenda 2030, the public need to be sufficiently updated on progress in a timely fashion so that we can all collectively course correct. We need a mechanism to provide frequent, high-quality, and fully disaggregated data across all SDG indicators which would be shared with all Government departments as well as Civil Society.

This data collection from the CSO (Central Statistics Office) and GIS needs to be adequately resourced.

The Government should make annual progress reports on its delivery of all of the 17 Goals to both houses of the Oireachtas.

A comprehensive SDG public communications plan

Additionally, a comprehensive public communications plan would maximise awareness, ownership, and engagement of SDGs. Therefore the online presence with regards to the SDGs needs to be much more user-friendly and accessible, and so we’ll be looking for details of a robust public communications strategy in the draft National Implementation Plan.

We want to see a fit-for-purpose public communications plan on the SDGs to showcase Ireland's progress to date, intended actions, and how the public can get involved in driving the SDGs.

Meaningful engagement of communities

As well as the ‘top-down’ strategy for implementation, typified by lead Departments under the umbrella of the Department of the Taoiseach with ultimate responsibility for SDG achievement, it is crucial to have ‘bottom-up’, local action on the SDGs demonstrated in this plan. The importance of this has been pithily summarised as ‘No Transformation without Localization’. Beyond informing and consulting, communities need to be true partners in the achievement of the SDGs.

National plans on the SDGs should be informed by the needs of local authorities for guidance on how to embed the SDGs in city and county plans, and the PPNs and LENs need to be involved.