Reports

Ireland has shown a strong commitment to addressing child poverty and improving outcomes for children and young people. Responding to the needs of children and young people, particularly those most vulnerable, requires integrated policies and services. This report is part of a joint project between the OECD and the European Commission to strengthen policy and governance arrangements for tackling child poverty and improving outcomes for children and young people based on a whole-of-government approach. The report assesses recent policy, institutional and legislative developments in Ireland and compares outcomes for children and young people with those in other EU and OECD countries. It finds that despite progress, Ireland still has room for improvement on child poverty reduction, and more can be done to address the trust gap between young people in Ireland and their government. The report recommends Ireland to adopt measures to enhance inter-departmental and inter-agency co-operation, strengthen evidence-informed approaches, reinforce policy monitoring tools, and improve accountability mechanisms. It also recommends measures to support the effective implementation of Young Ireland, the National Policy Framework for Children and Young People (2023-28), and to ensure policy coherence.

This report analyses the sequence of labour market support that individuals receive and evaluates two large public works programmes. It uses rich administrative data and finds positive labour market impacts of the Community Employment and Tús employment programmes. Building on the results of the analyses, the report makes recommendations on how Ireland can further adapt its active labour market policies (ALMPs) to better support its current and future jobseekers. This report on Ireland is the thirteenth country study published in a series of reports on policies to connect people with jobs, and is part of a joint project with the European Commission to strengthen countries’ capacity to evaluate ALMPs. The report is written jointly by the OECD, the Department of Social Protection of Ireland and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

This profile provides a concise and policy-focused overview of the state of health and the healthcare system in Ireland, as a part of the broader series of Country Health Profiles from the State of Health in the EU initiative. It presents a succinct analysis encompassing the following key aspects: the current health status in Ireland; the determinants of health, focusing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the Irish healthcare system; and an evaluation of the health system's effectiveness, accessibility, and resilience. Moreover, the 2023 edition presents a thematic section on the state of mental health and associated services in Ireland. This profile is the collaborative effort of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, carried out in cooperation with the European Commission.

Ireland is highly centralised and fast growing, creating co-ordination challenges in terms of delivering key investments and in key policy areas like transport, housing and education. Actors across levels of government recognise a need for a more coordinated approach to the delivery of the National Planning Framework, the principal spatial planning strategy of Project Ireland 2040, which includes also the National Development Plan (public investment).The report has three objectives which ultimately aim to support more balanced regional outcomes in Ireland: i) to clarify the gaps in terms of regional attractiveness across and within Ireland’s regions, including in terms of population and investment attraction; ii) to assess the ability for the National Planning Framework – in its current form – to address these gaps, and iii) to consider what multi-level governance reforms and attractiveness policies can be introduced or scaled to generate more territorially-balanced development.

Ireland is home to a vibrant social enterprise community, active in essential sectors such as health, care, and education, as well as local development and cultural and creative sectors. This report provides an in-depth analysis of social entrepreneurship and social enterprises in Ireland. It identifies the country’s strengths and challenges and provides policy recommendations. An action plan with concrete and actionable measures is also provided to support Ireland in the development of its new national social enterprise policy. Following an overview of the socio-economic landscape (Chapter 1), the report describes factors underpinning social entrepreneurship, social enterprises and the social economy in the context of Ireland (Chapter 2); analyses the institutional and legal framework around social enterprises (Chapter 3); explores conditions and opportunities for access to finance and funding (Chapter 4); navigates developments in access to public and private markets for social enterprises (Chapter 5); looks at the existing state of social impact measurement and data availability on social enterprises (Chapter 6) and concludes with skills and business development for social entrepreneurship (Chapter 7).

During the last decade, several OECD countries have been supporting citizen engagement in policy making to better respond to increasingly volatile environments and complex problems. Ireland has a strong tradition and culture of partnership models and stakeholder engagement in education policy making. However, a desire to explore new opportunities for school community engagement and how they could support existing national consultation processes contributed to the exploration of alternative forms of stakeholder engagement in education. This has prompted the Teaching Council in collaboration with a range of Government Departments and national stakeholders, to request assistance from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM) for the project 'Support to improve local community engagement in Ireland’s education policy development'. Drawing from international examples, existing stakeholder engagement practices in Ireland, the contributions of a wide range of education stakeholders and a pilot exercise, this report proposes a model and roadmap for exploring the potential of school community engagement to further support policy making across the Irish education system.

This paper examines the strategies and practices of Ireland’s Office of Government Procurement (OGP) and how the Irish procurement system’s effectiveness is currently measured. It then applies the OECD framework for measuring public sector productivity to some of the centralised procurement activity in Ireland to better understand effectiveness drivers within procurement processes.