In October 2024, the Irish government announces its Budget 2025. This will also determine the size of the Irish Government’s official development aid (ODA) programme, which works on behalf of Irish people to address poverty, hunger, and inequality in some of the world’s poorest countries.
INEW submitted its recommendations, urging the Government to increase the proportion of the ODA budget allocated to education in 2025, ensuring that education remains a priority in Ireland’s development cooperation. This investment will significantly contribute to building prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable societies worldwide.
We greatly appreciate Ireland’s well-established commitment to global education, evidenced by its significant pledges and contributions in recent years. However, the global education landscape continues to face severe challenges due to conflicts, climate shocks, and chronic underfunding, with 250 million children still out-of-school and many more lacking basic skills.
The submission outlines our key recommendations for the upcoming budget, focusing on crucial areas such as:
- Increasing the ODA Budget for Education: Building on previous commitments, we call for an increase in funding to address the critical gaps in global education, with a focus on girls’ education and education in emergency contexts.
- Education-Climate Nexus: Increasing climate funding dedicated to climate-proofing education and education-specific projects and taking a leading role in the COP28 Declaration on the Common Agenda for Education and Climate Change.
- Advocating for Free Education for All: Strengthening Ireland’s advocacy for free education in international forums, including supporting the global initiative for a new optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the rights to free early childhood, pre-primary, and secondary education.
- Strengthening Education Financing: Supporting reforms in tax, debt, and austerity measures, as well as advancing the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, to enhance the financial capacity of countries worldwide to invest in education.
With education serving as a vital driver to achieving all SDGs, these recommendations are important not only for guaranteeing quality education for all worldwide. Investing significantly in global education in 2025, building on the €250 million commitment from 2019 to 2024, will yield essential outcomes for development initiatives and advance the 2030 agenda and all SDGs worldwide for the good of all.
