Ireland’s Well-being Framework: Going beyond growth?

This article situates and critiques Ireland’s Well-being Framework (WBF) within the discourse and developments on the well-being economy as a means of transitioning to sustainable welfare and a post-growth society. This refers to the reform of welfare states and introduction of eco-social policies based on achieving well-being by meeting basic human needs for all within planetary boundaries. The article engages with the question of whether the well-being economy is an effective paradigm to mainstream post-growth policies. By applying this question to the case of Ireland, the article considers the transformative potential of the Irish WBF adopted in 2021. By examining its evolution, it looks at the degree to which the adoption of a well-being narrative and policy framework demonstrates an opening, in the Irish context, to address the challenges of going beyond the growth dependence of the welfare state and the increasing urgency of the contradictions of green growth. It concludes that Ireland’s WBF does not, in its current form, disturb the dominant policy priority of economic growth and any transformative potential it might have is curbed by its overly ambiguous nature.