The CSO, through Ireland's Institute for SDGs (IIS), supports reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals.
Budget 2024 data showed there was €25.6bn allocated to social welfare, up from €24.9bn in Budget 2023.
Ireland’s pension costs increased from €8.9bn in 2021 to over €9.4bn in 2022.
The CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) consistent poverty rate was 5.3% in 2022, compared with 4.0% for the previous year.
CSO SILC data for 2022 showed that the at risk of poverty rate rose to 13.1% from 11.6% in 2021.
During the last week of December 2023, there were 9,356 homeless adults and 3,962 homeless child dependants in Ireland.
This publication ‘Ireland's UN SDGs – Goal 1 No Poverty 2024’ is an update of the previous publication in the series from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). These publications monitor and report on how Ireland is progressing towards meeting its targets under the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The CSO and government departments and organisations collaborate to bring together data required in these reports for Ireland’s SDGs. This collaboration is formalised under the SDG Data Governance Board, which meets on a quarterly basis. The publication for Goal 1 was developed in collaboration with the Department of Social Protection.
This first publication includes data for Ireland for each of the SDG indicators selected by the UN to measure 'Goal 1 No Poverty'. Data is available at various levels of detail which include geography, gender, age group and other categories, where relevant, in accordance with the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.
This report on Goal 1 has 13 indicators which are organised into four user friendly chapters:
The titles of these chapters are based around common themes in the seven targets which are measured in Goal 1.
The 17 UN SDGs are a set of global development targets adopted by the UN member countries in September 2015 to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. The UN SDGs are driving the global development agenda towards 2030 (Agenda 2030). They address global challenges including those related to poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace and justice. The 17 goals are all interconnected, and in order to leave no one behind, the aim is to achieve them all by 2030. They recognise that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and help economic growth, while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
The CSO, Ordnance Survey Ireland* (OSi) and Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri-Ireland) established a project team in April 2017 to engage with a combined UN Statistics Division (UNSD)/Esri research exercise with a goal to develop and deploy a new approach for monitoring the UN SDG Indicators using geographic information systems. The result of this exercise is a new website (Ireland's SDGs Data Hub), hosted on OSi's Geohive platform, which is Ireland’s Central Portal for all SDGs and contains indicators data on the 17 UN SDGs for Ireland. All the indicators in this publication will be loaded onto the Geohive. This work has been formalised through the creation of Ireland’s Institute for SDGs (IIS) - an initiative between the CSO, OSi and Department of Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC). The membership of the IIS is expected to expand with ongoing monitoring and reporting of Ireland's progress towards meeting UN SDGs.
*Tailte Eireann is an independent Government agency formed by the merger of the Property Registration Authority (PRA), the Valuation Office and Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI), on 1st March 2023.
Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (12 February 2024) published 'Ireland's UN SDGs - Goal 1 No Poverty 2024'.
Commenting on the publication, Mary Smyth, Statistician, said:
"This latest report on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) has data on 13 indicators for Ireland, divided over four chapters: Poverty, Housing, Environment, and Financial Support. Data are presented in categories relevant to the indicators and geographical location, where possible. The SDGs and their associated indicators are, by design, wide-ranging in their coverage. As a result, the Irish data is provided by a number of sources including government departments, official organisations and international organisations such as the UN. This publication for Goal 1 was developed in collaboration with the Department of Social Protection.”
Commenting on the results of the publication, Ms Smyth said:
“Overall, we can see increases in a number of key indicators in Goal 1, such as financial support, but also in consistent poverty and 'at risk of poverty'.
Poverty
CSO data shows that the consistent poverty rate in SILC 2022 was 5.3%, compared with 4.0% for the previous year. For persons of working age, the risk of poverty, deprivation and consistent poverty tends to be correlated with employment status. An analysis by Principle Economic Status (PES) shows that the consistent poverty rate was highest among persons unable to work due to long-standing health problems (19.7%) and the unemployed (18.0%), while it was lowest amongst those who were employed (2.3%). The at risk of poverty rate in 2022 was 13.1%, an annual increase on the 2021 estimate of 11.6%. This figure is similar to the 2020 estimate of 13.2%, indicating that the decrease in 2021 may have been temporary and linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic measures.
Housing
Data from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage showed that during the last week of December 2023, there were 9,356 homeless adults and 3,962 homeless child dependants. This was down from the reported figures of 9,409 adults and 4,105 child dependants who were homeless in November 2023.
Financial Support
Total government expenditure is estimated to be €110.1 billion in 2024. Social protection is estimated to account for 23.2% of total expenditure in 2024, with 20.7% going to health and 13.7% to education."