Speech by Minister of State Smyth at the OECD Public Governance Committee Ministerial Meeting on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy

Check against delivery

The theme of the meeting “Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy” is important and timely. Trust in Government is vital to ensure citizen’s confidence in and support for government actions and policy interventions. Furthermore citizen’s active involvement and representation in the democratic process contributes to the legitimacy of the government and provides an important avenue for debate, dissent, inclusion and acceptance.

In Ireland we are committed to the fight against mis- and disinformation through the establishment of our Media Commission, Coimisiuin na Meán, and our Electoral Commission, An Coimisiún Toghcháin. We support Media Literacy through the Media Literacy Ireland Network and we support the security and resilience of our ICT systems through our National Cyber Security Centre.

We have strengthened and improved our citizen participation avenues with considerable success in our Citizen Assemblies and the creation of Public Participation Networks, Youth Assemblies and Older People’s Councils. We have made information available through our gov.ie website and Open Data Portal and used plain English to convey climate action terms in our Climate Jargon Buster Website. We have held many consultations to reach out to our citizens and stakeholders in the development of policy including our National Dialogue on Climate Action, our Second Sustainable Development Goals National Implementation Plan, and our Future of Media Commission public consultation which received over 800 written submissions from stakeholder groups and the general public.

We will continue to support women’s representation in public life through gender quotas for candidates in general elections, legislating for maternity leave for elected officials and we will respond to the recommendation from the Citizen’s Assembly on Gender Equality to improve family-friendly practices for all representatives elected to public office.

We are encouraged that the inaugural OECD Trust Survey showed our citizens had a 51% trust level in our National Government, a 62% trust in our civil servants, 67% for our police force, An Garda Siochana, and 65% for our Courts and Legal System.

We will continue to build trust with our citizens and reinforce democracy through upcoming improvements to our Statutory Framework for Ethics in Public Life, our Freedom of Information regime and our Regulation of Lobbying Act. We will improve poorly performing public services through the introduction of design thinking where we will co-create solutions with our citizens. We will improve the adoption of innovative ideas in the public service through supporting our innovation strategy, our innovation fund and our annual national innovation week, and we will continue our commitment to involve our citizens in Climate Action. Our digital and ICT Strategy sets out our approach to how we will deliver sustainable digital government for all, benefitting both society and the broader economy. In that regard, I have recently concluded a public consultation on digital public services the outcomes of which will inform our digital transformation priorities.

Global challenges like climate change can feel removed from the day to day reality of citizen’s lives and current struggles. The issues can seem intractable, complicated and immune to workable solutions. The hardships necessary for making progress can feel disproportionally placed on the individual citizen. We must link our actions for solving future issues with alleviating current problems, such as using increases in carbon tax to tackle fuel poverty. We must make renewed efforts to hold conversations with our citizens on complex issues, such as the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, and we must lead the way in the public sector in implementing behaviour change that will lead to better outcomes such as the Reduce Your Use campaign promoting energy efficient behaviour in the Public Service.

We will also continue to improve our governance tools to assist us in achieving our climate action targets including Green Public Procurement, Carbon Budgets, Sectoral Emissions Ceilings, and Green Budgeting. We recently developed and launched an online Green Public Procurement criteria search tool which allows users to rapidly find, select and download Green Public Procurement criteria relevant to a specific procurement project. We are also working with the OECD to improve the systems used to tag and trace expenditure and measure performance and to improve the climate and environmental characteristics of our Public Spending Code.

The OECD provide a vital role in assisting countries in identifying best practice, facilitating peer reviews, providing research and evaluations and supporting countries in their improvement and development in many areas. In all of the areas covered at today’s meeting supporting the building of trust and reinforcing democracy the OECD will again be relied upon and will no doubt competently step up to the mark to provide expert guidance and resources that will aid countries in their efforts in this regard.

In Ireland, we very much appreciate the work of the OECD and thank you for your support over the years. We look forward to a continued beneficial relationship between us both and with all our partner countries in the OECD. Together we can build trust and reinforce democracy.

The OECD Public Governance Committee Ministerial Meeting on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy was held in Luxembourg on Friday 18 November.

The meeting is a response to growing polarisation, a rise in populism, fake news, mis- and dis-information, low voter turnout, and a feeling among many that their voices are not heard.

Discussions focussed on Combating mis- and disinformation; Improving representation, participation, and openness in public life; Transforming public governance for digital democracy; Gearing up government to deliver on climate and other environmental challenges; and Embracing the global responsibilities of government and building resilience to foreign influence. The discussions were underpinned by the results of the first OECD Survey on the Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions.

Following the discussions the Declaration on Building Trust and Reinforcing Democracy was adopted with OECD member countries committing to:

• reinforce, promote and strengthen the foundations of democracies acknowledging that they should rise to the challenges of growing and changing citizens’ expectations in terms of representation, responsiveness, open government, and integrity of institutions, as well as green policies including through innovative approaches in the public sector
• strengthen the resilience of our democratic systems to address declining trust in public institutions, political disengagement and polarisation, as well as rising mis- and disinformation and other sources of destabilisation
• maintain open government as a core element of our democratic systems, while continuing our ongoing and open dialogue on public governance with non-OECD Members, with a view to maintaining peace, stability and free flows of goods, services as well as data and information flows
• continue efforts to build professional, effective and efficient public institutions, and high-performing leadership and civil servants in support of stronger democracies