Rights Indicators a key recommendation of United Nations Recommendations to the Irish State

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child Concluding Observations 2023 recommends that the State party Strengthen support for initiatives aimed at promoting children’s right to play aligning with General Comment 17 recommendations.

The UN committee provided specific recommendations to the Irish state to support the implementation of children’s rights including.

• fully incorporate the Convention into national legislation
• develop systematic child-rights impact assessment procedures
• implement a tracking system for the allocation, use and monitoring of resources for children
• ensure all policies have meaningful participation of children
• mainstreaming children’s rights and develop action plans for implementing the policy that includes specific time-bound and measurable goals and is supported by sufficient human, technical and financial resource
• comprehensive and systematic collection and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative indicators encompassing all areas of the children’s rights under the Convention, disaggregated by age, sex, disability, geographical location, ethnic origin, nationality and socioeconomic background

Increasing attention to Rights Indicators in National Policy

The need for research and data on indicators of compliance and disparities in the realisation of children’s rights to inform planning and provision is identified in the New National Children’s policy 

Indicators on provision of play rights have been limited to analysis of structural level indicators i.e; national policies, with further research needed on process level implementation and compliance measures.

The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) refer in the New Young Ireland Policy a Children and Young People’s Indicator Set – to track progress in the lives of children and young people aged 0-24  across each of the 5 outcomes, with relevant indicators.

The indicators identify and combine data from a range of sources including administrative survey and census data.  A review of the existing data sources however is necessary to ascertain if the information available provides appropriate information to evaluate provision for play.