Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Regarding the Sahel region and western Africa, I visited Senegal with the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, earlier this year. It was a very productive visit in terms of his and our relationship with the 34 African nations represented at that meeting. We have a very strong record of supporting development work in the Horn of Africa and dealing with the humanitarian challenges in Somalia, and especially in Sudan. I intend to visit Malawi in the next week or so for a week to see first hand the level of poverty and the areas of vulnerability relating to the issues discussed by Deputy Brady. We will have a continued presence on the ground. For example, we recently opened an embassy in Dakar in Senegal and we intend opening further embassies in Africa. Ireland will much closer to all of these situations and will be able to respond to them more comprehensively.

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