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Ireland is undertaking a review of their senior cycle (upper secondary education) led by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). It aims at collecting the views of all relevant stakeholders to identify the strengths and challenges of senior cycle in its current form, and identify priority issues and actions to move forward. As part of OECD’s implementing education policies project, an OECD team was invited to support the review of Ireland’s senior cycle. The team has carried out the assessment presented here and provided strategic advice based on four analytical aspects: smart policy design, inclusive stakeholder engagement, conducive context and a coherent implementation strategy. Each one of these dimensions matters to ensure that the review of senior cycle can move forward based on evidence and with strong support from stakeholders.

Technological change is transforming Ireland’s economic structures, leading to new jobs and innovative products that benefit consumers. Adoption of new technologies by businesses has been high relative to many other OECD economies, but it has been uneven across industries and the impact on productivity growth in most firms has been modest so far.

The OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts periodic reviews of the individual development co-operation efforts of DAC members. The policies and programmes of each DAC member are critically examined once every five to six years. DAC peer reviews assess the performance of a given member, not just that of its development co-operation agency, and examine both policy and implementation. They take an integrated, system-wide perspective on the development co-operation activities of the member under review and its approach to fragility, crisis and humanitarian assistance. Ireland is a strong voice for sustainable development. Quality partnerships with civil society, staunch support for multilateralism and good humanitarian donorship are hallmarks of its development co-operation. The vision and ambition of its 2019 international development policy, A Better World, requires Ireland to increase its official development assistance as planned, develop guidance and a new results management approach, and undertake strategic workforce planning.

In 2017, the 'Sláintecare Report' proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the Irish health system including a reform proposal to phase out private practice in public hospitals to end the unequal treatment of public and private patients – private patients typically have quicker access to care – and reduce waiting times for public patients. This paper summarises the arguments for and against this practice that were put forward to help inform the subsequent policy debate. The paper compares how private practice is regulated and organised in Ireland with the situation in four other OECD countries – Australia, France, Israel and the United Kingdom - and discusses the costs and benefits of private practice in public hospitals, and highlights potential consequences of a ban on this practice. It also describes the information required when making a decision whether to ban this practice or not. Finally, the paper discusses some alternative policy approaches that could replace or complement a ban of private practice to discontinue the unequal treatment of public and private patients.

Environmental regulators strive to protect the environment and public health from pollution from economic activity. This report uses the OECD Performance Assessment Framework for Economic Regulators (PAFER) to assess both the internal and external governance of Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It looks at the EPA’s role and objectives, its financial and human resources, processes for internal management and decision making, and systems for performance assessment. The review acknowledges the EPA’s achievements and good practices, analyses the key drivers of its performance, and identifies a number of challenges and opportunities for improvement to help the regulator prepare for the future.

Behavioural insights (BI) has become widely used by public bodies around the world, mostly towards improving the way policies are implemented and influencing individual behaviour. As the field of BI evolves to tackle more complex policy issues, there is widespread perception that BI can and should go beyond the study of individual-level decision processes for higher impact. This report presents research on applying BI to changing the behaviour of organisations, with a focus on fostering elements of a safety culture in the energy sector. It presents comparative findings from experiments with energy regulators in Canada, Ireland, Mexico and Oman, as well as guidance for applying BI to safety culture going forward.

This report presents a study of the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service (IGEES). The IGEES seeks to improve policy formulation and implementation by providing and building economic and analytical expertise across the Irish civil service. Based on international best practices, the study analyses the extent to which IGEES has contributed to a greater use of evidence-informed policy making in Ireland. It provides an overview of the service’s achievements and remaining challenges and makes recommendations for the future.