Ireland's SDGs governance story
This narrative shows how Ireland has built its institutional system to drive development and long-term monitoring of the Agenda 2030.
The 2030 Agenda encourages countries to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into planning and policy, on both a national and international level. As a whole-of-government initiative overseen in Ireland by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC), all Government Ministers retain responsibility for implementing the individual SDGs relating to their Departments.
SDG National Implementation Plans
As part of their oversight role, DECC was assigned responsibility for developing SDG National Implementation Plans. The Plans set out arrangements for interdepartmental coordination, stakeholder engagement and periodic progress reporting on all 169 targets.
A Senior Officials’ Group (SOG) on the SDGs, including senior representatives from all government departments, provides strategic coordination and reports, as required, to Cabinet. This Group is chaired by the Department of the Taoiseach (Department of the Prime Minister), with support from DECC. The SOG is assisted by the SDG Interdepartmental Working Group (IDWG), chaired by DECC. They are responsible for developing national policy in relation to SDGs, supporting policy coherency across the Goals, preparing Ireland’s periodic SDG reports, and organising arrangements of stakeholder engagement.
To ensure that no one is left behind - the Champions programme
This will be hugely challenging but is achievable if everyone across society gets involved. Many organisations across Ireland are already responding directly to the SDGs, and many more are active in related areas such as poverty eradication, environmental protection, improving gender equality, and sustainable economic growth. The Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications is sought and received seeking expressions of interest from organisations to take part in Ireland's first SDG Champions programme.
The SDG Champions are a mix of public and private sector, as well as civil society, organisations.
Guiding the work of the National Statistical Office’s with a Road Map on SDGs
The CSO and Ireland’s National Mapping Agency (Ordnance Survey Ireland – OSi) have a long-established working relationship, formalised through an Annual Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This MoU was motivated by two events in 2017:
New approaches & geographic information - The Hub for SDGs
The core goal of the CSO/OSi ongoing collaboration is to develop and deploy new approaches for the national measurement and monitoring of the 231 SDGs Statistical Indicators using geographic information systems, thereby realising the geospatial potential of statistical data.
Governance is central to the success of this initiative
A OSi/CSO/Esri Ireland data governance team was established in 2017 and holds weekly meetings.
In addition, the CSO established a national UN SDG Indicators Data Governance Board (UNSDGDGB) consisting of various stakeholders from Government Departments and Agencies, which meets on a quarterly basis.
The UNSDGDGB has responsibility for:
- What needs to be done
- Who is to do what and when
- Who are the stakeholders, and
- The opportunities for cooperation
Ireland’s HUB for SDG has been well received across Government and Civil Society. While providing an authoritative source of national SDG data, it also contains details on the National SDG Champions, and has a feature to allow organisations, national and local, to register SDG events/initiatives, including their geographical locations.
The Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications is sought and received seeking expressions of interest from organisations to take part in Ireland's first SDG Champions programme.
