Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I have a number of questions, which may be included in the wrap-up, on which the Minister of State can concentrate. The Taoiseach mentioned the Minister of State might elaborate on the points raised regarding the millennium development goals and the issue of Iran. I refer to the outcome of the discussions on sanctions against Iran. Alternatively, as expressed here, was a declaration made expressing concerns? That is far short of what, for instance, the United States has done. Is the Minister of State aware of whether meetings or negotiations have taken place with Iran by the European Union on that declaration subsequently?

I refer to what I consider to be a key strategy. I am one of the biggest critics of the European Union and some of the criticism is quite justified. The Lisbon strategy, as opposed to the Lisbon treaty, had quite far reaching social inclusion targets which were never met. That was one of the biggest failures of the strategy. In some ways they were an afterthought. Now, we have quite far reaching proposals on tackling poverty. Was there much opposition to agreeing the indicators to be used to measure poverty in the preparation of the 2020 strategy?

The Taoiseach referred to the Irish targets. When will we knuckle down and deliver on the target dates rather than the targets? I hope the information being used to set the targets is the latest available rather than being three or four years out of date. Given that we have gone through a recession in the past three years, if we use 2008 figures they would be well out of date and would in some ways be pointless.

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