Minister Foley welcomes Ireland’s first National Equality Data Strategy
- Foilsithe: 6 Eanáir 2026
- An t-eolas is déanaí: 6 Eanáir 2026
Minister for Children, Disability and Equality, Norma Foley, has welcomed Government approval of Ireland’s first National Equality Data Strategy.
The National Equality Data Strategy 2026-2031 has been developed by the Central Statistics Office and the Department of Children, Disability and Equality in partnership with a working group drawn from across Government and civil society.
Speaking today, Minister Foley said:
“It is good to see Ireland’s progress on gender equality in recent years reflected in our higher ranking in the EU Gender Equality Index. It shows that Ireland is becoming a leader on equality for women and girls. While we can rightly celebrate our successes, we must also acknowledge the work that still needs to be done. Working through our new National Strategy for Women and Girls, which I launched last month, we will continue to seek to reduce inequalities in areas such as women’s political leadership and work life balance to ensure that women can fully participate and lead in all areas of life.”
The Strategy requires all Government Departments to make a commitment to collect, use or disseminate equality data and to develop the organisational capacity to fulfil this commitment.
It provides a general approach for identifying and filling current gaps in equality data, as well as developing standard practices in classification.
The Strategy will improve Ireland’s collection, disaggregation and use of equality data to enable policymakers to develop sound and inclusive evidence-informed policies that improve service delivery and outcomes across Ireland.
Notes for the editor:
Equality data
Equality data is information that is useful for the purposes of describing and analysing the state of equality. The protected characteristics outlined in the Equality Acts (gender, civil status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, race and membership of the Traveller community) act as a foundation for identifying the areas where equality data should be collected, but equality data is not limited to these characteristics.
Contents of the Strategy
The Strategy is divided into Four Strands:
- Collection of Equality Data
- Standards and Classification of Equality Data
- Use of Equality Data
- Monitoring and Oversight of the Strategy
It includes an Action Plan running from 2026-2031. The Actions proposed within the Strategy are intended to provide the building blocks for the development of a whole of Government system to collect and use equality data.