Dr Luke McGrath, Economist with the WDC Policy Analysis team has released a new WDC Policy Briefing titled “Linking Sustainable Regional Development with the National Well-Being Framework”.
The public policy design and evaluation frameworks that guide decision-making will have impacts on regional as well as national economic and social outcomes. In recent years, there has been a concerted global effort to move beyond conventional economic metrics to focus on the more holistic concept of well-being and the interrelated concept of sustainable development. More holistic measures of progress will be necessary to combat future environmental and developmental risks such as climate change.
These issues are salient in Ireland, where traditional metrics have become heavily distorted by globalisation impacts. The “First Report on a Well-Being Framework for Ireland” and the associated Central Statistics Office (CSO) well-being data hub represent Ireland’s first national well-being framework. The well-being framework aims to incorporate broader measures of progress for use in policymaking and evaluation.
This Western Development Commission (WDC) Policy Briefing focuses on strengthening the national well-being framework concerning two key missing links whose omission threatens to weaken the framework’s coherence. The first is the lack of clarity surrounding the concept of sustainable development. The second is a lack of regional integration that threatens to distort policy choices regarding regional
development.
Considerations for the future development of the national well-being framework are presented through an amended dashboard, a suite of suggested indicators at a more disaggregated regional level that intersects relevant well-being themes, and a practical policy application to the monitoring of the goals of the National Planning Framework.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the WDC
Dr Luke McGrath
Economist
Policy Analysis Team
