Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This committee recently published a report on reaching the target of 0.7% of gross national income in overseas development aid, ODA, recommending that the Government put forward a multi-annual plan to be submitted to the committee and the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. What is the Government's thinking on how the 0.7% target would be reached?

Policy coherence across Government also needs to be addressed. What measures are being put in place to ensure that policy coherence can be achieved? We referred to it on the day of the launch.

Colleagues have mentioned concern over the balance between bilateral and multilateral programmes. We understand we need to be involved in some multilateral programmes, but there is a strong view on the value of our bilateral programmes.

The final matter is something we all need to address. On the day we launched the report, we referred to communicating the value of the good work done by Irish Aid to the citizens at large. We could all more in that respect. If the Minister of State, the Department or Irish Aid have new measures or programmes they hope to put in place, they need to communicate their effectiveness and value and highlight the necessity to increase the aid in coming years.