Ms Jane-Ann McKenna:

I will respond to some of Deputy Howlin's other points. If we look at the debt piece and I mentioned this to Deputy Ó Murchú already, we have looked at this in our pre-budget submission this year. In particular, we had Professor Attiya Waris, the UN independent expert on foreign debt, over to Ireland recently to bring forward some of these ideas on how we can tackle this massive issue. There are certain things Ireland can do and is doing, in particular around participating in the reallocation of the IMF special drawing rights, that are beneficial. It is great to see that we are moving forward in areas like that where we can have a direct influence. Obviously we are looking at the Irish candidacy for the UN Human Rights Council and the upcoming EU Presidency, as well as the Summit of the Future event happening later this year. These are all opportunities where we can put forward both what we want to do to build on the 2030 agenda and what we need to do on debt relief and cancellation and alternatives.

To touch on a little bit of what Mr. Crowley mentioned around public support, the Cathaoirleach will be familiar with some of the research we have done in Ireland, especially on the Irish public's support for international development assistance. What we have seen is that 77% of Irish people support ODA. They support official development assistance and the same number of people, approximately 76%, believe that it makes a difference. They believe it helps relieve poverty in developing countries. It is important to note that. We are talking about our own ODA obligations but also what we are championing at a European level. This is what Irish people want. To them the most important values are humanity and humanitarianism. That is inherent in a lot of Irish people and we have seen that through our research. It has been consistent over the past four years that the majority of Irish people support Ireland's position on this issue. There is a huge level of work going on, particularly within the Department of Foreign Affairs, on some of these EU issues. At this stage it really does start to get political in terms of what we in Ireland are calling for at the highest level, on the future we want to see for Europe and our international co-operation policies.