H.E. Mr. David Donoghue:

I am delighted to be present and thank the committee for its invitation. As the Chairman mentioned, we are meeting at an important moment that sees three major conferences taking place before the end of the year. The Addis Ababa conference is first and is specifically on financing for development, followed by the New York summit in September that will announce the new sustainable development goals and targets and the climate change Conference of the Parties, COP 21, in Paris in December that we all hope will produce a new, legally binding and universal climate agreement. People speak about 2015 as being a momentous year for sustainable development in all of its forms. We hope that, by the end of the year, each of the three conferences will have been a success. One can genuinely say that the world will be a different place if we can get these agreements in situ, but there are several large "ifs" that I will touch on in my statement and in discussion with members.

I will first address the particular task that Ireland has been asked to take on, namely, co-facilitating or co-chairing the post-2015 development agenda negotiations. I am happy to discuss the prospects for Addis Ababa, but I have no specific responsibility for that. I am broadly aware of what is happening and know the importance of the conference for my work. Strictly speaking, though, the Addis Ababa co-facilitators are Norway and Guyana. I do not envy them. My Kenyan colleague and I are working closely with them, but I do not speak with any particular authority about the Addis Ababa track.

It is a great honour for Ireland to have been chosen to perform one of the two co-facilitation roles for the finalisation of the post-2015 development agenda. One can speculate as to why we were approached but, to one degree or another, it reflects the esteem in which Ireland is held at the UN as an honest broker and sensitive mediator between the global north and global south on many issues. We are known for an independent-mindedness. It also reflects the specific reputation that the Irish Aid programme has had for many years. This inspires confidence on the part of many developing countries in our impartiality and fairness vis-à-vistheir interests.

The structure of the negotiations is such that we have had approximately six months of monthly sessions. We are now approaching the final stretch and my Kenyan colleague and I are determined to complete the negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda by 31 July with a view to the summit in September. The Addis Ababa conference is an important event that will happen between now and the end of July. It is one that, if it goes well, will be a positive factor in the completion of our own work. If it goes badly or there is a sense of frustration or stalemate on the part of any group of countries, that could affect the atmosphere around the conclusion of our work. For the moment, though, I am thinking positively. Within our post-2015 negotiations, the mood has been positive and constructive in recent months. There have been some difficulties in negotiating the Addis Ababa outcome document. I am happy to discuss them, but I hope that they are of a temporary nature and that, by this time next week, we will have clarity about the outcome. There is a certain amount of concern about Addis Ababa because the negotiation of that document has been so protracted and, as of now, is not yet complete.

Members have held valuable discussions on this topic, so they will be aware of what the sustainable development agenda seeks to do. In essence, where the millennium development goals, MDGs, were only eight in number and focused on traditional development priorities, for example, health and education, the sustainable development goals are new in at least three respects. First, they will cover a vast range of policy areas because they reflected the so-called three dimensions of sustainable development, those being, economic, social and environmental. We are no longer dealing purely with poverty eradication. We are now dealing with poverty eradication, saving the planet - environmental protection - and the creation of conditions for sustained economic growth around the world. If I am not straining the metaphor, this is like three sides of the same coin. The view is that, for example, one cannot tackle poverty in a sustainable way without factoring in the other two dimensions. A vast and highly ambitious agenda, it is considerably larger than the MDGs. This is a key difference.

Another key difference is that whereas the millennium development goals were not negotiated in a strict sense, they were just promulgated, these sustainable development goals are to be owned by all the countries concerned, the 193 member states, and they are, therefore, to be negotiated. There was an earlier negotiation phase called the Open Working Group, which completed its work a year ago, and that phase reached agreement on a set of 17 goals and 169 targets but that was a relatively limited group of countries. The negotiations, which I am co-facilitating, involve seeking the approval of each of the 193 member states of the UN for the goals and targets and finalising them in various other ways and also providing details about how we will implement the goals, both the financial and non-financial means, and monitor progress. It is a framework we are trying to put in place based on a proposal which already exists for 17 goals and 169 targets. The targets can be understood as subsidiary goals in individual areas. This is a very ambitious project.

The third key difference is that this agenda will be universal and that means literally that every country in the world will agree to take up these commitments. They are only political commitments, they are not legally binding, but every country in the world would be endorsing the same agenda. This is in an effort to get away from the traditional north-south divide whereby development was seen purely as a priority for developing countries, now the intention is to have a universal agenda covering all the areas I mentioned which will help every country. Obviously, some countries are further along the spectrum of development than others but no country in the world, however well developed, could say that it has achieved all or any of the goals to 100%. To one degree or another, there is room to be make up in every country in the world. We emphasise very much that this is a collective agenda and it spans these three areas.

Ireland has been closely involved in this particular project for the past few years. In September 2013 we co-facilitated a special summit which reviewed the millennium development goals and how they had performed. On the whole they have performed well in some areas and less well in others but that summit took stock of where the world had got to in terms of the millennium development goals. Ireland and South Africa co-facilitated that summit, and I pay tribute to my predecessor Ambassador Anne Anderson who played a key role there. We have also been involved in the Open Working Group phase, as one of the smaller number of countries. We also had a key role during the EU Presidency a few years ago when Ireland at ministerial and official level brokered agreement within the EU on how the EU should approach these negotiations.

I am not sticking closely to my prepared script. I will not exceed the time the Chairman has set me-----