NWCI Opening Statement to Budgetary Oversight Committee - Gender Budgeting

Published: Tuesday, February 27, 2018

A Chathaoirleach and members of the committee, Thank you for the invitation to appear before the Committee and the opportunity to comment on the Equality Budgeting initiative led by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DEPR) and undertaken by six other departments. I understand that all in all you have had three NWCI documents shared with you 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 DEPR last year. I’m aware that DEPR appeared before you last week and has given you an overview of its broad approach and priorities. I will, therefore, not repeat those and move directly to the task requested of us by the Chair, namely to provide an assessment of the pilot initiative. DEPR has informed you that it had consulted with NWCI and IHREC during its process of developing that initiative and we wish to commend Mr. Beausang, Ms. Swaine and their colleagues for their efforts to do so. I’ll take this opportunity too to welcome the initiative shown by the six departments who have committed to engage in the pilot process. Following this presentation and others, the Oireachtas Committee on Budgetary Oversight issued a report on gender budgeting on 30 May 2018. The report can be found on the Oireachtas website here: https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/committee/dail/32/committee_on_budgetary_oversight/reports/2018/2018-05-30_report-on-gender-budgeting_en.pdf.

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