Ms Elisa Cavacece:

As the committee will probably be aware, Ireland has a long well-established development partnership with Central America. Irish missionaries have been present in Central America since the 1970s, with Irish NGOs joining in the 1980s. As the Minister of State mentioned, the core focus of our support to civil society partners in Central America is around two areas, climate change and its impact on the poorest and most marginalised people. Our civil society partners are working very closely with communities to make sure that more resilient and more sustainable livelihoods are developed. For example, in the agriculture sector much work is being done around developing more effective irrigation systems, introducing more modern agricultural practices and also increasing the focus on agri-processing and ensuring the poorest small holder farmers have a link to market to sell their produce at a reasonable price.

The other important area in our development assistance programme in Central America is around making sure the poorest and most marginalised people are able to hold their government accountable in terms of how it makes decisions on the allocation of resources and the allocation of power. These include issues such as access to land and access to water. There is much work done at community level by civil society partners to ensure citizens, with a particular focus on women, are able to influence decision making. We are quite comfortable that through the very solid partnership we have with organisations such as Trócaire, Christian Aid, Misean Cara and front-line defenders to look at the human rights issues we will be able to receive information on what is happening on the ground and have a good understanding of what is happening in the countries.