Mr. Michael Gaffey:

The truth is that Agenda 2030 and the sustainable development goals are not a legal instrument. The convention stands and it is but the SDGs are not. It would be great if they were and if there was true legal accountability but the world is not at a stage where we can do that. Ireland was very much involved in the negotiation of the SDGs and is now involved in the work to revive and regenerate progress on them. What we are trying to do is have a strong political and moral commitment where countries hold each other to account on the goals. Last year, there was a sense of a breach of trust between the developed and developing world, following Covid and the initial response to the war in Ukraine.

There was a sense among some developing countries that the developed countries were leaving behind the SDGs and focusing on other concerns. One of our huge priorities this year at the UN was to get that confidence back in respect of the common commitment to the goals. The difference between these goals and the earlier millennium goals is that it is a very big and complicated framework where countries have obligations both nationally and internationally. Being so complex, I suppose it would be easy to say that it is impossible to achieve that, but the truth is that we were making good progress from 2015 and we were set back by the impact of Covid. However, I would say that post Covid, poverty levels have recovered in many countries but not in the countries that were the least developed and the poorest, and in countries affected by conflict. There is a real lesson to us there, if we want to make progress, that we do have to look at the countries affected by conflict and the poorest countries if we are to regenerate overall progress on the goals.

The Deputy is right. We, and our leaders, all said the right things at the summit in the UN in September. The challenge now is to act on that. Official development aid, ODA, as Mr. Roughneen said, is only a very small portion of the financing that is required if the sustainable development goals are to be reached. There is also a need, as I said earlier, to reform the international financial architecture. There is a need to help countries generate their own domestic resources, including through taxation and otherwise. That is not to say that ODA is insignificant. It is significant financially, it is significant as a catalyst and above all, it is significant as an indication that developed countries will live up to the pledges and commitments that they have made. Ireland is making progress towards the 0.7% target. Mr. Roughneen said it is too slow. It is not really for me to say; it is more for the political system. For instance, in the UK it was decided to make it a legal obligation to have 0.7% of GNI go towards ODA. That was adhered to for a few years. The problem is that a government then decided to change that legislation and they have gone back now to a limit of 0.5%. Some countries that have reached 0.7% are now using some of that for Ukrainian refugees within their own country. What I would say about Ireland is that the Government is committed to increasing ODA steadily. We have increased Vote 27 to the Department of Foreign Affairs every year for ten years. The Department's aid budget is higher this year than it has ever been before. We have now exceeded the level in the top year before, which was 2008.

For the SDGs, the ODA and for our work here, what is really needed is political commitment and determined action on the part of those running the aid programmes to target those who are furthest behind. I would say that we, in the Department, are developing a strategy to ensure that our work is really informed by reaching the furthest behind first. There was a fear among some of us for a while that maybe we could be accused of just adopting a slogan. We are really doing strong technical work now to ensure that when we are implementing our budgets and designing our programmes and projects, there is a real tool to ensure that we do emphasise and prioritise the furthest behind first. We will be very happy to share that with everyone when we have it fully concluded.