Professor Patrick P. Walsh:

Deputy O'Brien is not staying and I would forget his points otherwise. The Deputy is right, and I want us to be at 0.7% of GNP now. I am in a school of politics and international relations, so I realise that there are political constraints. I believed that I had the public with me, but the Deputy is telling me that it might not be, so I will turn to something else. What the Deputy suggested was good.

To some extent, this answers the question on the environment. When we took action to stop burning coal and get rid of plastic bags, there was disquiet and many political parties were running for cover, but we could always say that it had nothing to do with us and that it was down to a directive of the European Communities or European Commission. The beauty of setting up an inter-party committee - this was the recommendation in my paper - that comprises the whole of Government, its Departments and elements of civil society is that if we can put it out to the public that the best of the best in the private sector, civil society, academia, government and the Civil Service have sat down together and committed to making a binding recommendation, all of the political parties could just say that they signed up to the committee, its decision had nothing to do with them and they could not roll back on it if the recommendation from that major consultation, like the One World, One Future document, was for 0.7% of GNP. That is another way of being a bit top-down while also being inclusive to a degree. However we do it, we cannot allow what is happening at the moment to continue. The Deputy's suggestion was a good one.

The work done by schools has been great. We are involved to a certain extent. This is where the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment plays a great role in initiatives, such as the green flag programme and so on. That Department is in tune with society. Someone mentioned that its score card was the worst, but the EPA and others involved in this area are smart and they hold engagements with local communities and academia that perhaps other Departments do not. If we need to mobilise and get things done, the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment might be the right choice. I know the Taoiseach and the President. They will all row in behind it because they will just say that they are the facilitators and they want to move the situation forward.

UCD has undergraduates, researchers and other academics volunteering overseas. Squaring all of that and examining our engagement in education in Africa is important. However, the point I was trying to make was that, rather than putting money into UK universities or sustainable development programmes in Ireland in order to market the Irish Aid programme, the best way of marketing the programme is to get people in schools in Portmarnock and all around the country and in universities engaging with people in Africa, discussing these issues and implementing measures together as opposed to sending an intermediary to tell people what the story is. That is a major point.

The question on multilateralism refers to the same idea. I am proud of what Irish Aid does. I have seen it in Tanzania. It is creative. When our PhD students graduated from Dar es Salaam University College of Education, DUCE, and so on, the Irish Embassy held the graduation ceremony. For the first time, our senate met in Tanzania and gave out degrees. The graduates' families could attend the event. This is the sort of creativity that these ambassadors have. They know exactly what to do and when to do it. They are outstanding in that regard.

Why do we like bilateral aid? We say that it is not untied, but it is when we focus on the fragile and least developed. While we might address livelihoods and societal issues like education, health, clean water and sanitation, when we focus on those who have been left behind and the most vulnerable and make that our priority, we are locking aid in. I would like our partnerships to work in partnership with them to deliver that.

This does not mean that one cannot bring in the private sector. Many wonderful things are happening, from artificial intelligence to back-up systems. Instead of providing health care through something like the HSE, hospitals or community outlets, systems could, via mobile phones, move towards community workers doing extension work with communities. The private sector would get behind that and finance it. One could have all sorts of wonderful SDG partnerships with that type of focus in the most fragile states.

Both Deputies asked about multilateral aid. We must contribute to the UN, the EU and so on because we are members of certain bodies, but there are parties that are more discretionary. I call them "quangos of the UN system" or "quangos of humanitarian assistance". A part of our reason for being involved in them is that we do not have the capacity, outreach or scale to work alone, yet we want to respond and to be able to tell the Irish public that we have given a couple of million of euro to tackle something. We might not have a presence or capacity there, but we have partners that allow us to get there. That is comforting and it works.

On the other hand, though, we must recognise something about the SDG agenda. The UN system and humanitarian lines are opening up to partnerships with, for example, universities, parliamentarians and civil society agents. When we see a line taking shape, there is no reason for us not to get involved. The more that we are involved, the more of an impact we will have.

I am with the Deputy. It was a beautiful point to make. We could be cross about this. Regarding Mr. Guterres, the UN used to be about security first and development later. If we put the money that we invest in military and security into development instead, particularly in north Africa, and ensured that that region developed properly, we would mitigate war, future migration and other problems. It is terrible that we let all of that happen and, ex post, there may be a migration pressure coming at us that we want another country to take on instead. We pay it to take on the sins of our lack of action on our borders in the past ten, 20 or 30 years.

At the same time, we should really respect the care given to refugees in Lebanon. We should really respect Lebanon for what it is doing for Syria. Having money going in there still matters. Should we have a presence there? Yes. Our peacekeepers should have development people, academics and others side by side. If we start to pump money into certain places, we should be asking for a greater presence in them. Perhaps it takes a little time to catch up but we could be a little more strategic in this regard. We should recognise that there is an effort to fix a problem that should have been fixed way up the line.

I agree on not liking to see cheques being written to third parties with no oversight. That is not good.

I have answered some of the questions. The main one asked was on educational access. I know the response does not go down well. There are three levels. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network, SDSN, the group I work with, has an ethics in action programme. I could give the members the minutes. The programme is hosted by the Pontifical Academy and it works with Religions for Peace. It involves representatives of five major religions, the UN system, scientists and civil society people talking about the SDG agenda and the role of ethics. With regard to education, we have seen that the figures on participation at preschool, primary, secondary and university levels are appalling and getting worse. While we might say the second millennium development goal, MDG 2, is great, yielding good rates of attendance and enrolment at primary school, we would, if we were really being honest, acknowledge that completion rates are a disaster. Quality is a problem. My main point is that one can build schools and put money into them but one has to put money into the professional training of the teachers. In this regard, a big mistake is being made. We have St. Patrick's College and Mary Immaculate College. We are brilliant at training teachers, yet when we are in our programme countries, we do not put an effort into forming university partnerships, involving UCD, Marino, the Church of Ireland or others, with a view to training teachers, training them on extension and getting the curriculums up to speed. This is a huge problem.

The final issue on which we focus – this is big for UCD and everywhere else – is that knowledge is not virtue. What one is teaching does not necessarily make the trainees people who will go out into the world and participate for the public good and be sympathetic to humanity, the environment and the places in which we live. This is even a challenge for Ireland now. One of the questions posed by the SDGs is whether, in our civics education and the way we deal with ethics at both primary and secondary levels, we are training people to work for the public good when they emerge from the school system. As they are paid by the taxpayer, they should be contributing to the community, nation and globe. Are we training people for oil companies or the financial sector? What are we doing? Is our approach correct or not?

Access and quality of education are important but so, too, is the nature of what one is teaching, be it virtue or whatever else one wants to call it. These levels need to be borne in mind. Our teacher training colleges are excellent and would jump at the opportunity to work with similar ones in Tanzania and other countries, in addition to gaining access to the schools. That is the SDG-type partnership. We can use various technologies, the private sector and other things.