Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I could not be happier to see a restatement of the commitment on behalf of the Tánaiste. Ireland has always had a human rights-based approach to development. If we want to eliminate hunger and poverty, as I have repeatedly stated we do, we must include the rights of the poorest women in the world to equality of opportunity. Without sexual and reproductive rights and access to family planning services these women have absolutely no opportunities, never mind equality of opportunity, and cannot pull themselves and their children out of the cycle of poverty to which they are condemned.

The MDG-5 target is now the furthest from being attained and progress is slowest in sub-Saharan Africa. Over 250,000 people are dying annually in childbirth due to the lack of maternity care. The awful thing is that instead of improving, the rate of progress is slowing down. Failure in this area is at least partly due to the fact that the target 5b, which was to ensure universal access to reproductive health, was initially omitted from the millennium development goals. This time it is essential that, far from being a tag-on, it is central to the new post-2015 development framework.

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