Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I cannot say at the moment. We can take either of two approaches to this. We can cut €95 million pro rata across the whole budget, affecting spending streams such as the bilateral aid programme, multilateral involvement, NGOs, civil society, etc. I am not disposed towards taking that type of blunt unsophisticated approach. We now have the opportunity to look at all our funding streams through the prism of a new focus on hunger and in that respect I cannot accept what the Deputy says with regard to people dying as a result of this initiative.

We are refocusing and reprioritising the overseas aid and development assistance to the poorest of the poor and those who are in real need. That is why, unique among European countries, we have identified hunger as the key development issue, and that is where we are prioritising our resources. People are not dying but we are relieving people out of endemic poverty and hunger.

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