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

I welcome the substantial increase in funding and we realise it will be put to very good use through direct programmes and the assistance to the various non-governmental organisations, as well as other international organisations. On behalf of the committee I take this opportunity to thank the many Irish people and their international colleagues who work in some of the most difficult areas in the world.

We have given some of the practitioners who have been working in those crisis-hit areas, including nurses, doctors and other workers, the opportunity to make presentations to this committee. It is important that we record our appreciation for their work in very difficult circumstances and dangerous places. I attended a seminar on the need for climate action in Athlone Institute of Technology last Thursday night. It was organised by my colleagues, Deputies Eugene Murphy, Troy and Cowen. At that meeting, which was very well attended by people from all age groups, I made the point that Irish people have shown have great empathy with the poorest in the world over the centuries as a result of our history of famine, poverty and hunger. In the debate about climate change, the need for climate action, and the need to protect the environment, if we were able to make the point more clearly that the biggest victims of climate change are the poorest in the world, it might help us to create a greater awareness among us all that we need to do more and that doing more would benefit the poorest and the regions that are hardest hit. If work was done to bring about greater awareness of that point, that message could resonate with the public.

At that meeting in Athlone Institute of Technology last week I made the point that only days previously we had seen huge devastation in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, particularly in the Beira region of Mozambique. There was huge loss of life and areas were literally wiped out. When we visited Mozambique and Malawi, the issue of rising water levels and the people's insecure future was brought home to us forcefully. We need to see determination to get the message across that these people will continue to be the biggest victims in the world and will continue to be kept in poverty because of climate change.

I appreciate the Minister of State's kind and generous remarks regarding the report the committee drew up. We focused on a number of specific areas, including the area of gender equality and the need to ensure that women and girls are kept in education. During our trip to Malawi, we met agronomists who were teaching the skills to grow potatoes, manage crops and so on. One of the officers told us that it was their ambition to get women to come to the classes in the school because they will listen and pass on the knowledge. That emphasised to me the importance of ensuring that girls and women get that educational opportunity.

Professor Gerry Boyle, the director of Teagasc, was before the committee. Teagasc is playing a role in the area of knowledge transfer. Is further progress being made in ensuring that the private sector is more generous in participating in programmes in developing countries? Perhaps such companies could ensure that some of their relatively young retired staff would put their skills, experience and knowledge to good use in those countries for short periods. Many of those big international Irish corporations have the capacity to spend money in those countries. As we all know, what they see as relatively little money would do a lot in developing countries. The area of knowledge transfer and interchangeability could deliver a great deal of benefit at very little cost to the Exchequer. It would do so much good on the development side.