Ms Jane-Ann McKenna:

I will come in on Ireland’s role. The start of the budgetary processes is today, more or less. This is happening in real time. We are looking to the next two and a half years. During Ireland's Presidency of the EU, we will have limited ability to influence, but what we are looking for is for Ireland to really try to influence the MFF at this stage and to look at that external action budget and see what is being prioritised, where we can influence and where we see human development.

It is not only about our relationship with the Department, but Barry Andrews MEP is the chair of the development committee which has done a report in the European Parliament, supportive of the ideas of Global Gateway but very clearly saying that the traditional modalities of ODA need to be retained and expanded to address the human development targets, including poverty reduction. These are some of the areas where Ireland does have a significant reputation.

That gives us standing on a global stage. We are very principled and very values driven in terms of where we want our money to be spent, what we want it to be spent on and ensuring that we are looking at some of those pieces around the furthest behind. That is where our focus needs to be in the next year in these negotiations, not in two years' time when they are coming to the end but now saying, while the discussions are happening, that we need to ensure that human development is very much front and centre in our external action budget, and ask where it is, where the least developed countries are represented and where we are seeing the investment in poverty reduction, not just the investment in infrastructure. We need to look at our voice at a number of different levels and, particularly in the lead-up to Ireland holding the EU Presidency, seeing how we can create more and influence that to a greater degree.

We work with CONCORD, which is the network for all European international NGOs. We have seen that some countries within Europe and some areas are aligned with Ireland's way. We need to ensure that we bring them and bring together a coalition of the willing who are really interested in seeing this through so that we do not realise in a couple of years' time that this issue has slipped off the agenda and become something that Ireland is not proud to represent because we do not see at its centre poverty reduction, human development or these values that we very clearly want to represent on the global stage. Those are areas where we can exert influence now and why it is so important that our voice is there amid the current discussions.