Ireland’s Progress

There are a number of publications that assess how Ireland is doing in terms of achieving the SDGs. Not all use the same indicators and so arrive at different conclusions. Please use the various publications as well as your own experience to assess how you think Ireland is doing on achieving the SDGs.

You can find updates from the Government here.

Measuring Progress: The Sustainable Progress Index 2022

Measuring Progress: The Sustainable Progress Index 2022 ranks 14 comparable EU countries based on their delivery of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Written by Prof. Charles M.A. Clark of St John’s University, NY; Dr. Catherine Kavanagh of UCC; and Colette Bennett of Social Justice Ireland, the index compares 14 EU countries across all UN SDGs, assesses their performance on each individual SDG; creates a ranking table for performance overall; and provides national and local-level policy proposals to improve Ireland's progress towards the Goals. The report uses 87 indicators across the 17 goals to analyse performance.

Ireland ranks 10th out of 14 comparable EU countries in 2022’s Sustainable Progress Index, commissioned by Social Justice Ireland.

The index comprises three dimensions: economy, society and environment. Ireland is ranked 9th out of the 14 countries on the economy. On the social index, Ireland is in the middle of the ranking, in 8th place. Ireland scores 9th on the environment index which suggests notwithstanding the progress made in terms of the Climate Action Plan and carbon budgets, we face significant challenges in meeting our environmental targets.

The Sustainable Progress Index is a landmark annual report with the potential to enhance the policy decisions of the Irish Government when it comes to progressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.  While recognising that we are performing well in some areas and that our environmental score has improved, Ireland is still seriously underperforming in areas such as  poverty, inequality and climate action, and this is dragging our overall ranking down.  Addressing the complexities of sustainable development requires a balance between economic and social progress and sustaining the planet’s environment and resources as well as combatting climate change.   While making progress, Ireland still has substantial work to do to reach acceptable outcomes.

You can find an overview of the findings here.

 

Ireland’s data hub

Here you can find Ireland’s ‘Geohive’, the geospatial data hub developed in collaboration with the CSO and Ordnance Survey Ireland.

This is a collaboration platform for reporting on progress towards the goals and sharing information on related initiatives.

Ireland's progress against each goal is measured using a set of United Nations (UN) global and European Union (EU) agreed targets and indicators.

From this home page, you can access information on specific goals, view the video and sign up to receive updates.

EU: Ireland according to the Eurostat

Note the unfavourable position of SDGs 2, 6, 12, 11, 13, 15.

View here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/sdg-country-overview/