I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for the invitation to appear before the committee and for the opportunity to comment on the equality budgeting initiative led by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and undertaken by six other Departments.
I understand that, all in all, the committee has received three NWCI documents over recent months - our substantive report setting out a proposed framework for gender budgeting in Ireland; a briefing document focusing specifically on what form the Government pilot project should take; and, an instructional tool setting out gender assessment mechanisms that could be adopted in ex-ante and ex-post analyses with illustrative examples applied to some budget 2018 measures. This final document was presented to high level officials in a briefing supported by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform last year.
I am aware that the Department appeared before the committee last week and has given it an overview of its broad approach and priorities. I will therefore not repeat those but will move directly to the task outlined by the Chairman, to provide an assessment of the pilot initiative.
My opening statement involves a broad assessment and obviously, thereafter we are happy to go into detail where we can.
The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has informed the committee that it has consulted with the National Women's Council of Ireland, NWCI, and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, during its process of developing that initiative and we commend Mr. Beausang, Ms Swaine and their colleagues on their efforts to do so. I also welcome the initiative shown by the six Departments that have committed to engage in the pilot process.
As members will be aware, in its working paper the Government committed to prioritising gender as its initial equality focus area in accordance with broad international precedence and due to the relatively wide availability of data. Departments were in the first instance asked to review and assess policies for impact on gender equality and set high-level gender equality objectives and indicators at programme level. Much of the work to assess policies and set high-level gender equality objectives within Departments was in fact done for the National Strategy for Women and Girls 2017-2020. Some Departments have done the work to identify specific needs of men relevant to their portfolios. The Department of Health has, for example, identified gender-specific objectives in its men’s health action plan. Departments were therefore advised to begin by looking to the commitments they made in the national women’s strategy in identifying their goals and objectives for gender budgeting. This strategy can be viewed as a compilation of existing policy commitments already agreed within Departments.
Departments were then asked to report on gender equality, budgetary objectives and targets in the Revised Estimates Volume, REV. At first glance, the identified objectives could be described as underwhelming. It is important, however, to take into account the period of time Departments had to prepare for the REV, the limited training to date made available to relevant officials, the absence of gender expertise within Departments and, as referred to by Mr. Beausang last week, international lessons recommending specificity in the pilot stage. Though close monitoring and critical reflection is essential to the effective implementation of gender budgeting, we must also accept that this will necessarily be a long-term process. Departments must therefore have the opportunity to scope out how best to utilise the tools made available to them and how to concretely apply them. Genuine commitment will be needed to ex ante, as well as ex post, analysis, for example. I therefore am not inclined to overly criticise the policy decisions evident in the REV at this point but rather to look at how Departments are armed to achieve at least the goals they have set.
In saying this, it is clear that some of the objectives identified are not ambitious and do not adhere to the prescribed approach of the pilot to focus on gender equality. As discussed in last week’s committee meeting with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the health goal, for example, is extremely limited when considered in the broad context of health inequalities and gendered health inequalities. While the consideration of age-related and socio-economic inequalities is to be welcomed, the metrics disappointingly do not include sex-disaggregated data, which are available to the Department in this area. This is particularly concerning given that, according to 2017 research commissioned by the Marie Keating Foundation and pharmaceutical company MSD, lung cancer has now replaced breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer fatalities among women in Ireland. Indeed, lung cancer rates among women are expected to increase by 136% by 2040.
To ensure an ambitious process of change, experts have emphasised the importance of maintaining an open process that allows for input and influence from outside Government administration and of providing for a co-ordination structure that can provide critical input and feedback. They have cautioned that gender budgeting processes led solely by the public administration system tend to keep ambitions lower and focus on changes that are easily obtained. In this regard, the proposal by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to establish a steering group involving the NWCI and other external expert actors is to be welcomed. Individual Departments must also be encouraged to provide for public participation in setting equality objectives and the oversight roles of this committee and the select committee will be vital.
The availability of data is clearly critical. Our understanding is that, as part of this pilot process, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has requested that Departments identify and log where data deficiencies exist. We are not aware whether a system has been put in place to assist Departments in this regard or to compile this information. I had a brief conversation with the Department yesterday and as it was not able to confirm that, I suspect that as yet, such a system has not been developed. There has been a changeover of staff there and the Department was unable to clarify my query yesterday. This will be crucial in informing the successful roll-out of gender budgeting in the long term. In June 2017, the Scottish Government published Scotland’s equality evidence strategy, which aims to identify the key research and evidence gaps for each protected characteristic and assigns responsibility for closing those gaps. In 2008, Israel amended its statistics law to require collection of gender-disaggregated data.
Progress on the REV equality objectives are to be reported in the public service performance report. For gender budgeting to be effective, the quality of data indicators and analysis will be critical. While, for example, the high-level goal set by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is clearly ambitious, it identified only one gender-specific indicator. In order to fully assess the impact of child care expenditure on gender equality in the medium to long term, qualitative as well as quantitative analysis will be required, as is the case across the board. This will necessitate gender expertise, as well as existing economic and budgetary expertise. Gender expertise is a specialised body of knowledge which is currently lacking within most Departments. In the first instance, the newly established Parliamentary Budget Office could recruit in gender expertise to provide for adequate analysis and to develop guidelines for implementation.
Creating the appropriate context for these pilots remains imperative. An administratively-led process is useful to address micro-level and single-policy economic matters. It is easy, however, to lose sight of macroeconomic policies and fiscal policy in particular. The question of overall fiscal policies and the fiscal space remains crucial to equality in Irish society. Members will have seen that in its document to be released tomorrow, the Parliamentary Budget Office, has also made reference to this. One means by which the Government can appropriately guide Departments in their gender budgeting efforts and provide clear indication of their macro-level priorities vis-à-vis equality is to publish an equality budget statement alongside budget 2019. In the medium term, the Government should consider creating a legal foundation for gender budgeting, building upon the existing public sector duty requirements.
