Mr. Niall Burgess:

-----and we are examining other partners we could work with in that region. We have an aid programme in Vietnam and as we scale it down we have been scaling up our practical aid activities in the region but also in Myanmar. We have a newly opened embassy in Bangkok with Brendan Rogers, former head of Irish Aid, who is accredited to Myanmar. He is regularly on the ground there and is giving us an understanding of the situation that can help to direct our efforts as well. When one looks at it in totality it is an indication of how Irish Aid has a reach that goes far beyond our bilateral country programmes and is capable of reaching what would otherwise seem rather difficult areas for us to reach. We are still in the early stages of a crisis that is going to be protracted and shows no signs of immediate or short-term resolution.

On Malawi, I was very interested to hear what Deputy O'Sullivan had to say. I was there a few months ago and I was impressed at the work which the embassy has been doing to try to work with the Government in Malawi around issues of governance, even in areas which are unusual for us, for example, with the judiciary and the legal system. The embassy has helped to build links between the judiciary and our own legal system here. Those are not particularly expensive programmes. They do not demand very significant resources but they demand a lot of thought, effort and some creativity as well in trying to find connections that can be valuable and enduring and yet they can have an impact beyond the resources that are put in. There is certainly scope for looking at what we do and our own systems for accountability and transparency in Irish Aid and seeing how we can engage some of our partner governments more closely. That is an area for future development.

On the question of coherence, that is an area we have to continuously look at and there are several dimensions to it. There is obviously the coherence with our own multiple activities. As I said in my opening remarks, the work we do in support of development is a whole-of-Government effort and that is not simply the non-foreign affairs and trade part of ODA that runs through other Departments, it is the entire Government footprint.

We have been talking about Ireland's footprint across the globe and the way that footprint makes an impact is obviously an issue to which we need to give thought. We have been doing a lot of work in Irish Aid on building economic links. This goes to the point made about how the food industry can play a positive role in research and the transfer of skills. We have been doing a lot of work through, for example, the Africa Ireland Economic Forum on bringing different players together to see how they can co-operate, fundamentally around these goals that are now the centrepiece of Irish Government policy, in ways that are mutually reinforcing.

I will ask one of my colleagues to speak in detail on the fellowship programme and how the fellows are selected and allocated. In looking at the future development of our programme, there is tremendous potential in the area of fellowships. It goes to the point about how we can enrich thinking in some of our partner countries on some of what we do well so people can bring those skills back to their own countries. I have been struck by what is happening in Vietnam in particular - where, perhaps, our fellowship programme is more developed than in other areas - and the fact that the networks we have built through our fellowship programmes have given us real traction with the government there on the further development and evolution of Vietnam. This was very evident during the President's state visit to Vietnam last year. I have left out some issues and I will pass them to my colleagues.