Ms Lorna Gold:

I thank the committee for giving Dóchas an opportunity to make a presentation on the third financing for development summit. As has already been outlined, 2015 represents a critically important year for international development. Three interlinked summits this year will determine the development framework for the next 15 years. The first of these events is the financing for development summit in Addis Ababa, which is the third summit in the financing for development process that started in 2000 following the first millennium summit. The second event is the critical negotiations at which decisions will be made on the post-2015 sustainable development goals. Ireland and Kenya will co-chair these discussions, which will take place at the UN in September. The third of the crucial 2015 events is the conclusion of the United Nations Climate Change Conference process, known as COP, which will take place in Paris in December. Therefore, 2015 represents an exceptional year in terms of the potential for a breakthrough in international development issues and, in particular, in addressing the structural causes of injustice which keep people in poverty today.

The first of these negotiations will take place in Addis Ababa. In the absence of a step change in the financing mechanisms and structures to achieve substantial breakthroughs in the sustainable development goals, those goals will not be achieved. The three agendas this year are deeply interconnected, yet are separate. There are interdependencies between them, but the negotiation tracks remain separate. Today, we want to highlight four issues that we are bringing before the committee: the need for a recommitment to international public financing, in particular development assistance; debt; tax justice; and the role this committee might take in ensuring there are robust follow-up mechanisms on foot of these processes.

The first issue we are highlighting is the 0.7% target for public financing for development. The scale of the ambition to meet the sustainable development goals and address climate change requires a step change in international financing. The harnessing of new resources is a core part of this. The international community has placed an emphasis on ways to leverage and ensure new resources to ensure the sustainable development goals. At the same time, however, the existing commitments to official development assistance need to be honoured and met. It is hard to put too much emphasis on this point at this stage in the delicate negotiations on financing for development. Official development assistance is both an expression of trust in the multilateral process and a concrete commitment with practical development outcomes.

Developed countries first committed to giving 0.7% of gross national income to overseas development aid as far back as 1970. This commitment was reaffirmed in 2002. Official development assistance increased throughout the 2000s and was aligned to the millennium development goals. Despite this, there remains a delivery gap. Globally, just 0.3% of gross national income is spent on official development assistance. This means that a gap of 0.4 percentage points of gross national income remains, by comparison with the commitments made to the delivery of official development assistance. Moreover, allocations to the least developed countries continue to fall. They fell by 5.6% in 2013 and by a further 16% in 2014. Least developed countries rely most on official development assistance due to their limited capacity to raise domestic resources and avail of other sources of external financing. Therefore, commitments to additional sources of public finance are absolutely critical at this stage of the financing for development process.

Ireland first committed to the 0.7% target at the 2000 UN millennium summit. Ireland recommitted to this target at the review summit in 2005 and again in 2007. Ireland's official development assistance, as a percentage of its gross national income, reached a peak of 0.59% in 2008. We maintained our aid budget during the financial crash. We have managed successfully to stabilise it at approximately €600 million per annum. It is to the credit of the current Government that it has managed to sustain official development assistance at this level. However, the 0.7% target remains in the Government programme. As the economy has picked up, the percentage of gross national income going to official development assistance has steadily declined. We are now at 0.39%, according to the figures for 2014. This level was last seen over a decade ago.

Ireland's aid programme is widely regarded internationally as one of the best in the world. In fact, Ireland is part of a very small group of donors that remain committed to the highest quality of poverty-focused aid. Our aid is still 100% untied. We have one of the highest percentages of aid going to the least developed countries, which need it most. Some 52% of our aid goes to such countries. This means our aid has a genuine poverty focus. Our aid remains 100% grant-based. Given the quality of Irish aid, and the role Ireland is playing in the international negotiations on the sustainable development goals, Dóchas firmly believes now is the time to recommit to the 0.7% target and to show leadership in the international community, particularly within the EU. The Government needs to set out an annual timetable to meet the 0.7% target by 2020. I will now hand over to Ms Eilis Ryan, who is going to talk about the debt situation and how it relates to the financing for development process.