Mr. Ruairí de Búrca:

Malawi has now adopted a national action plan for the diaspora which has been modelled on our own and based on contacts with our system. It also informed the decision to come here last week and look at how we managed public sector reform.

I will confine my remarks to development, education and how we tell our story because that is really important. We can always do more. When we were making tough choices in the past few years in the context of budgets, the development education budget was sacrificed in order that we could continue to put money into our key partner countries. It is something we will have to do better in the next few years.

Deputy Seán Barrett made a good point about the video. I do not know if anyone saw the RTE documentary "The Thin Green Line", but the public reaction was to our ambassador in Sierra Leone and the work she and her team had done there in response to the ebola crisis. I have been told that the feature prompted telephone calls to the Department and RTE. That shows that there is interest. We can probably use all types of media, including video, to get the story out. It is also about engagement with people. In that regard, we can build on the strategy we published last year. We have an Irish Aid visitors centre on Clonmel Street which was formerly located on O'Connell Street and people are visiting it all the time. As well as the transition year students who visit the Department, we have also developed educational resources that students use in transition year to learn about Ireland's role in development. We work with some of the teacher unions to build up the knowledge and resources available and the teacher unions twin with schools abroad. These personal experiences are really important. There is more we can do and we are open to considering any good and useful suggestions. I hope, as the budget begins to grow in the next few years, that this will be something that we can come back to and reinvest in and build the bridge back to citizens in new and innovative ways, to tell them about the good work in which they are investing and in which they should take pride. Anyone who is Irish and has travelled abroad and seen that stuff is an ambassador for the good work both Irish Aid and Irish development NGOs do more broadly. We can find ways to capture that experience and get the people concerned to go and tell others about what they have seen. People do not necessarily trust a civil servant when he or she tells them that they are doing a good job, but if somebody else can get the message across that there is good work being done, there is a great value in it.

One of the things we have tried to do is use public events to engage people. Africa Day is one of the events we organise, but we have had stands at the National Ploughing Championships also. We try to meet the taxpayer and people with skills to try to engage in dialogue. This Saturday we are organising a volunteering fair, to which people who are interested in volunteering can come and meet others who have had that experience and hear what it was like. If they are interested, they can meet others who can bring them on that journey. That is something we are doing, but I am sure we can do more. To that end, we are open to considering useful ideas.