Ciara Conway (Waterford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Donoghue for his presentation. I have a very specific question on goal No. 5 in respect of achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. The UNFPA is on record as saying family planning is central to achieving gender equality and women's empowerment but it is also a factor in reducing poverty. This year, the UN has a very specific focus on youth but unless we have gender equality in terms of women and young girls being able to plan how many pregnancies they have and how far apart those are, it will be very difficult for any of the 17 goals to be achieved. That is in the context of recognising that approximately 800 women a day die due to pregnancy or pregnancy-related complications in the developing world. It is a huge number and it leaves many children orphaned, families without carers and villages bereft of females because of their biology. I acknowledge that it can be a difficult issue but there has been some criticism, in terms of the millennium development goals, that equality slipped down the agenda as it is politically difficult. If one wants to end poverty and achieve the first part of goal No. 3, which is to reduce global maternal mortality, the key is access to safe, free choice in relation to family planning.

We have spoken about countries setting their own priorities and that is a huge concern where, culturally, women are not seen or treated as equal. Mary Robinson, a much better Irish woman than me, said it is the perpetrator and never the victim who uses the excuse of culture. Where in the 17 global goals are those issues going to challenged? Central to that is another WHO figure I came across recently. Approximately 14 million people enter and die in the world every year who are never registered. It goes back to this whole central thing about data collection. What can we, as parliamentarians and as a government, do and what can the UN do to ensure that really boring but important work of data collection is a priority so that we can see that we are making inroads? If one is trying to measure maternal death rates, population and mortality, it cannot be done unless births and deaths are registered. It is not something people instinctively think about when they think about trying to improve infrastructure, but it is central and key. As a parliamentarian or a diplomat, one might understand that kind of knowledge, but it may be a harder sell for others to get involved.

Given our own difficulties with the issue in Ireland, how can we make a global impact? I fear that if we do not get this right, it will make it very difficult to achieve any of the goals.