Sustainable Development Policy
Ireland published its first National Sustainable Development Strategy in 1997. This was revised in 2002 in the run-up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Ireland is currently preparing a revised National Sustainable Development Strategy. It will outline key objectives in areas such as climate change, biodiversity, public health and social inclusion.

In 2007, Comhar SDC published a set of comprehensive recommendations to feed into this revised National Sustainable Development Strategy.

What is an Indicator?
Indicators are tools that measure simplify and communicate important issues. They tell us where we are and help us to work out in which direction we should be heading. Indicators can be used to translate complex information into easily understandable units which in turn can aid decision making at all levels. The indicator set has two fundamental purposes:

• To improve information for decision makers
  
• To measure progress against objectives

Indicators in Ireland
In recent years in Ireland, as elsewhere, greater attention has been focused on the need to develop indicators to measure sustainable development. Sustainable Development: A Strategy for Ireland, Ireland's first sustainable development strategy, published in 1997, acknowledged the need to develop appropriate sustainable development indicators.

Since then, a number of agencies have produced data sets which have helped to measure sustainable trends in Ireland. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has developed Environmental Indicators for Ireland in the Environment in Focus series and the Central Statistics Office has published relevant data in Measuring Ireland's Progress. In 2002, the National and Economic and Social Council published National Progress Indicators for Sustainable Economic, Social and Environmental Development. At local level, the Local Government Management Services Board (LGMSB) publishes an annual report that measures the performance by local authorities across a range of services.

Some Other Examples*
The Ecological Footprint is an indicator of human consumption of natural resources and a means of communicating the intensity of resource use. It is calculated by analysing data on a wide range of activities such as how we use energy, transport patterns, waste production, food production and consumption and land use. The amount of biologically productive land and water area that is needed to meet this demand for resources and absorb the wastes that are generated is determined in global hectares (gha) which allow global comparison of national Footprints. The total amount of global hectares is divided fairly among the global population to determine each individuals ‘earthshare’ which currently is 1.8 gha. The Ecological Footprint of 150 countries is calculated annually by the Global Footprint Network and published in the form of National Footprint Accounts and a time series for Ireland from 1961 to 2003 is available.

The Human Development Index is a summary measure of human development. It measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development:

• A long and healthy life, as measured by life expectancy at birth.
  
• Knowledge, as measured by the adult literacy rate and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio.
  
• A decent standard of living, as measured by GDP per capita in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms in US dollars.

The HDI is compiled by the UN Development Programme and Ireland is ranked 4th in the world.

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) is an innovative new measure that shows the ecological efficiency with which human well-being is delivered around the world. It is the first ever index to combine environmental impact with well-being to measure the environmental efficiency with which country by country, people live long and happy lives. The Index doesn’t reveal the ‘happiest’ country in the world. It shows the relative efficiency with which nations convert the planet’s natural resources into long and happy lives for their citizens. The nations that top the Index aren’t the happiest places in the world, but the nations that score well show that achieving, long, happy lives without over-stretching the planet’s resources is possible. The HPI shows that around the world, high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being  life satisfaction), and that it is possible to produce high levels of well-being without excessive consumption of the Earth’s resources. It also reveals that there are different routes to achieving comparable levels of well-being. The HPI was calculated for the first time in 2006 based on data from 2005 and Ireland was ranked 113 out of 178 countries.

*The text is this section comes from the 2007 Report commissioned to the EnviroCentre by Comhar- Counting What Counts. It is available in the documents section.

Comhar’s Work
Comhar has commissioned two reports in recent times that outline the progress of Sustainable Development Indicators (SDI) in Ireland.

• In 2007, ‘Counting what Counts’, which was prepared by the Envirocentre, provided recommendations on national indicators for Sustainable Development (SD), based a thorough review of current social, economic and environmental indicators. 
• Measuring Ireland's Sustainability, also prepared by the Envirocentre in 2007, provided an overview of Ireland’s performance on sustainable development and gave recommendations on the development of satellite accounts for sustainability and a SDI set.
  
• In 2009, follow up commissioned work on indicators specifically examined sub-national development indicators in Ireland.

Comhar is currently working on developing a comprehensive and integrated sustainable development indicator (SDI) set for Ireland for use with the National Sustainable Development Strategy and to develop a headline indicator set for Comhar SDC to be published annually to raise awareness of sustainable development.