Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We continue to maintain a very strong relationship with the NGOs, which are partly funded by the taxpayer through Irish Aid. The issue the UN and the multilateral organisations are trying to grapple with at present is the major challenge of how, globally, governments are going to be able to fund the commitment into the future. To answer the Deputy's question, one of the issues we are now looking at is that of how we manage the dynamic between long-term development goals, such as the eradication of poverty and hunger, and the numerous humanitarian crises that are breaking out, for example, in the Mediterranean, as well as how we manage the interoperability between long-term development goals and humanitarian crises. There is also the question of how we leverage the opportunities within the global private sector. The private sector has a role to play and, within the Department, we are trying to get a greater degree of traction in that relationship which goes beyond mere corporate social responsibility. At the multilateral level, through the UN and other organisations, Ireland has an important role to play.

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