Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I wish Deputy Breen well in his new position and look forward to the traditional cross-party support that has characterised our aid and development programme for many years.

The global economic crisis highlights the importance of ensuring maximum coherence in the international effort to achieve the millennium development goals by 2015. The Government is strongly committed to building a coherent approach to development across all Departments and ensuring that our development policies are supported, and not undermined, by other areas of policy which affect developing countries.

We are working to ensure coherence within the Irish Aid programme, as well as coherence with our programme countries' poverty reduction programmes. Ireland is also playing a strong role internationally in policy discussions to build the effectiveness of aid and coherence across policies affecting the poorest countries and communities in the world.

The United Nations development co-operation forum is an important body, bringing together national and local governments, parliamentarians, multilateral organisations and representatives of civil society and the private sector. The aim is to discuss trends and challenges in development and share experiences and ideas for greater coherence and effectiveness. Ireland has worked closely with the forum, with a particular emphasis on how to build accountability and transparency in development co-operation.

As the Deputy is aware, the second meeting of the forum was held in New York on 29 and 30 June. I strongly welcome the emphasis it placed on the need for coherent development programmes aligned to countries' national development strategies. This is, in essence, the aid effectiveness agenda on which Ireland has taken an international lead and which we implement in our own programme.

The forum also noted the need for greater coherence between United Nations agencies, which has been an important Irish priority in our engagement with the UN system.

I welcome the forum's focus on the issue of policy coherence. I also welcome the emphasis in the outcome document adopted unanimously at the MDG review summit in New York last month on the need for increased efforts to enhance policy coherence for development. Ireland played a strong role in the negotiations leading up to the adoption of the outcome document and our priorities are well reflected in it.

The development assistance committee of the OECD carried out a peer review of Ireland's aid programme in 2009. Its findings were overwhelmingly positive. It found that Irish Aid is a strong, cutting edge development programme with a clear focus on the world's poorest people. It stated that Ireland is a champion in making aid more effective.

The review provided a number of helpful recommendations on the further development of policy coherence for development in Ireland and it welcomed the establishment of the interdepartmental committee on development. As the chair of the committee, I am ensuring that the recommendations are being examined and followed up across Departments.

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