In 1847, William Nelson Hancock envisioned the civil service, academics and stakeholders coming together to address the challenges of Ireland in a post-famine period. In today's Ireland, we face a different set of challenges posed by specialisation in land ownership and in our products and services that will be exposed to digital transformations and disruptions to global trade and financial markets. In addition, we face implementing transformative goals that will lead us on a pathway to net zero carbon emissions and sustainable development. Hancock's vision remains as important as ever. By fostering collaboration, upholding integrity through open science policy and embracing public sector innovation, SSISI members can help empower the civil service and academia to drive meaningful change for people on the island of Ireland.

Good quality data and reporting systems are fundamental to the achievement of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the United States of America (USA) currently lacks tools to adequately assess national SDG performance. This paper addresses this critical gap and presents a novel index methodology assessing the USA's performance in 137 SDG indicators relative to its best and worst-performing Northern Hemisphere peers. A distinct taxonomy classification system measures national performance across critical SDG dimensions. Performance in the entire SDGs is assessed through a composite index representing the most comprehensive assessment of USA's national SDG performance to date. This index holds significant potential for policymakers and stakeholders alike. Its indicator-based approach facilitates the highly accurate identification of "problem areas", thus informing the development of tailored national policy. Its unique peer-based normalization methodology creates a positive peer-learning environment, which can catalyze the development of efficient SDG policy. In providing the means by which accountability might be reintroduced into the national governance system, the index has the potential to increase SDG ownership in the USA.

This paper is a vote of thanks to Professor Shane Whelan's (2024) concise, interesting and insightful history of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland (SSISI).2 2 The paper also offers a prospective vision for SSISI as it approaches 200 years since its foundation.

With less than seven years remaining before the 2030 target date of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Ireland is currently unable to adequately assess national SDG performance. This paper presents an index that has been created to combat this critical research gap. In this respect, an index has been developed for each of the unique SDG indicators (n = 159) identified during the early stages of the indicator selection process where national performance is assessed relative to the best and worst performers in the European Union (EU). Ireland’s performance in individual indicators is then aggregated revealing the country’s performance in several critical dimensions of the SDGs, including society, economy, environment, as well as means-of-implementation (MoI), linkage indicators, and the SDGs as a whole. Further, annual time series data has been collected, allowing for the assessment of the country’s relative performance in 140 SDG indicators from 2015-to-2021. Its extensive indicator framework makes this index the most accurate and comprehensive assessment of Ireland’s SDG performance, to date. Similarly, as illustrated throughout this paper, our unique peer-based approach, and the positive peer-learning environment that it engenders, hold the potential to catalyse the development of efficient and effective national SDG policy. As such, the results from this index should be used to inform future national SDG monitoring, reporting, and policy initiatives, including future voluntary national reviews.

Less than seven years remain for Europe to meet the targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However robust and accurate methods for assessing SDG progress are currently lacking. Through the development of several SDG indices, this study addresses this critical knowledge gap by providing the means to accurately identify national 'problem areas' and thereby accelerate SDG achievement. Specifically, an indicator-based approach has been used to create a composite index containing 166 unique SDG indicators that assess a nation's SDG performance compared to the best and worst performers in the European Union (EU). Our results indicate that each EU nation is on average, 58% of the way towards the best performer in the overall SDG indicator framework. A nuanced taxonomy has been developed that allows for the assessment of SDG performance in several critical dimensions of the SDGs, including in 'Means-of-Implementation (MoI)', 'Linkage', and 'Outcome' indicators. The index's comprehensive framework allows for EU's performance in individual SDG indicators to be investigated while providing the most accurate assessment of national SDG performance, to date. Overall, the indices presented in this paper can significantly enhance the understanding of SDG performance while concurrently guiding national and EU SDG policy development.

This chapter outlines the Irish government’s approach to creating top-down multi-stakeholder partnerships for implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The research presented in the chapter explores the perceptions of non-state actors on the possibilities and barriers of following such a partnership approach in implementing the SDGs in Ireland. In doing so, it also evaluates the successes and failures of the Irish government’s approach toward including diverse non-state actors in implementing the Goals and its implications for other nations on building top-down SDG partnerships.

Food insecurity remains a vital concern in Kenya. Vulnerable members of the population, such as children, the elderly, marginalised ethnic minorities, and low-income households, are disproportionately affected by food insecurity. Following the pioneering work of Sen, which examined exposure to food insecurity at a household level using his “entitlement approach”, this paper estimates households’ vulnerability to food insecurity. In turn, the outcome variable is decomposed in order to explain the food insecurity gap between households classified as “marginalised” and “non-marginalised”. We applied the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to examine vulnerability to food insecurity and, in particular, contributions of observed differences in socio-demographic characteristics (endowments) or differences in the returns to these characteristics, which, in our context, is associated with poor public services and infrastructure in the vicinity of the household. The results indicated that differences in vulnerability to food insecurity were mainly attributable to observed differences in socio-demographic characteristics such as education, age, and household income. Therefore, policies seeking to attain equity by investment into targeted household characteristics in terms of access to food and other productive resources could effectively combat food insecurity. For example, policymakers could develop programs for household inclusiveness using education and social protection programs, including insurance schemes against risk of endowment loss.

"An Irishman’s life on the Caribbean island of St Vincent, 1787–90: the letter book of attorney general Michael Keane." Irish Studies Review, 29(2), pp. 265–266

The transition path to inclusive and environmentally sustainable economic development must be Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) intensive. As such, we outline an economic framework that demonstrates the need to transform the nature of STI and reorient it towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) together with the various public policy options that can reorient investment patterns in STIs towards achieving the SDGs. In addition, the Means of Implementation (MoIs) of the UN 2030 agenda will need to be blended to create new modalities of finance, governance and public policy at all levels if STI is to be reoriented and transformative changes in economic, social, environmental and political systems are to be achieved for the SDGs. After laying out a framework, the paper also addresses the implications of our analysis for the UN global Technology Facilitation Mechanism (TFM) which aims to promote STI access, transfer and capacities across nations to achieve the SDGs.

The United Nations 2030 Agenda emphasizes the importance of multistakeholder partnerships for achieving the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Indeed, Goal 17 includes a target for national governments to promote multistakeholder partnerships between state and non-state actors. In this paper, we explore how members of civil society organizations and the private sector perceive both the possibilities and challenges of multistakeholder partnerships evolving in Ireland for achieving the SDGs. The research uses data gathered during 2018 and includes documentary research, participant observations of stakeholder forums in Ireland and the United Nations, and semi-structured interviews to address related questions. The results demonstrate that numerous challenges exist for forming multistakeholder partnerships for the SDGs, including a fragmented understanding of the Goals. They also note previous examples of successful multistakeholder partnership models, the need for more leadership from government, and an overly goal-based focus on SDG implementation by organizations as major impediments to following a multistakeholder partnership approach in the country. These findings suggest that although Goal 17 identifies multistakeholder partnerships as essential for the SDGs, they are challenging to form and require concerted actions from all state and non-state actors for SDG implementation.

In 2015, 193 UN member countries signed Resolution A/RES/70/1 2030 - 'Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development'. The United Nations (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lie at the heart of this international agenda on sustainable development. The 17 SDGs have associated targets (169) and statistical indicators (251) that aim to assist a follow up and review process for achieving the SDGs. A key contribution of this paper is to create a taxonomy of the SDG Targets, and associated indicators, into desired Outcomes for each of the goals, Linkages (from a defined goal) across all other goals, Means of Implementation (MoIs) to achieve a defined goal and MoIs to achieve the overall agenda across goals. We incorporate our taxonomy into the indicator codes that were developed by UNSD for data transfer, tracking and other statistical purposes in the Global indicator framework for the SDG targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [as contained in the Annex of the resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 6 July 2017, Work of the Statistical Commission pertaining to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (A/RES/71/313), annual refinements contained in E/CN.3/2018/2 (Annex II), E/CN.3/2019/2 (Annex II), 2020 Comprehensive Review changes (Annex II) and annual refinements (Annex III) contained in E/CN.3/2020/2, and annual refinements contained in E/CN.3/2021/2 (Annex)]. The benefit of our taxonomy is shown by way of example using the 83 'Environmental' SDG targets, and associated indicators, spanning the 17 SDG goals, as defined by the UN Environmental Program (EP). Using the available environmental SDG indicator data for Ireland we benchmarked Ireland's performance on environmental SDG indicators relative to peer nations in the European Union (EU). Overall, the analysis shows that Ireland is 64 per cent of the way towards the aggregate best performers in the EU in available environmental SDGs indicators. We are also able to decompose Ireland's overall performance by desirable Outcomes, Linkages and MoIs across the available 83 Environmental SDG Targets. Overall a mixed performance is captured. The agenda needs MoIs and positive Linkages to achieve the desired Outcomes in the UN 2030 for Sustainable Development.