Dan Neville (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the opportunity to raise this issue and thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to do so. I wish to discuss the role of Irish overseas aid in education because it is an area that can be marginalised during times of international recession. It is ten years since the international community including Ireland adopted the millennium development goal of education for all in the Third World. The millennium development goals recognise explicitly the interdependence between growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development. The millennium development goals commit to the achievement of universal primary education and underpins education for all in the Third World.

Education is the key to breaking the poverty cycle in the Third World. A child born to a literate mother is 50% more likely to survive past the age of five years. A single year of primary school increases the wages people earn later in life by 5% to 15% for boys and even more for girls. No country has ever achieved continuous and rapid economic growth without first having at least 40% of its adults able to read and write. Gains in women's education made the most significant difference in reducing malnutrition, outperforming a simple increase in the availability of food. Women with six or more years of education are more likely to seek prenatal care, assisted childbirth and postnatal care, reducing the risk of maternal and child mortality and illness in the Third World.

It is easy to lose sight of what is at stake with regard to education. Ultimately, the world economy will recover from the global recession we are experiencing, but the crisis could create a lost generation of children in the world's poorest countries, whose life chances will have been jeopardised by a failure to protect their right to education. Ireland can and must play its part in averting this imminent lost generation. Our international aid policy must place education as the cohesive core behind all our aid priorities.

Our aid policy should reflect a number core principles, which I will now outline. Education is a fundamental human right with each state being the primary provider of education and it should be supported to provide quality education for all in the Third World. Education must be comprehensive and the education for all goals must be promoted as a holistic education policy. The focus on achieving universal primary education must be complemented by an approach which supports education for all across the age spectrum. Civil society is crucial to educational progress and it must be supported to promote democratic institutions and to hold governments to account for policy decisions, including the financing of education and the formulation of education policy. I saw the difficulties civil society has in influencing the situation in Africa during my recent visit to Ethiopia with the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade. Education for all must mean "all". Discrimination against girls and women in education continues to persist in the Third World. Children with disabilities constitute one third of all out-of-school children.

Ireland must ensure its aid policy reflects the core importance of education to achieving all other development goals. In particular, education is the key to poverty reduction. Ireland must meet its revised commitment of 0.7% of GDP by 2015 and, in particular, must commit at least 8% of overseas development aid to basic education. Will the Minister of State, Deputy Costello, comment on the Government's position on these targets? Irish Aid must provide clear and transparent figures to show annual funding of the education for all goals and what percentage this is of the larger overseas development aid budget.

Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I welcome this opportunity to address the vital role education plays in the Government's overseas aid programme. We in Ireland know the central role education plays in unlocking potential and enabling economic and social development. We have brought these lessons to bear on our approach to working with developing countries to empower them to drive their own development.

According to the latest figures from UNESCO more 61 million children of school going age remain out of school today. On top of this grim statistic, approximately 200 million children in school are not able to read a simple sentence because the quality of education they receive is of such poor quality. Nevertheless, real progress has been achieved in recent years. Many countries have made significant progress towards achieving universal primary education during the past decade. From 1999 to 2008 an additional 52 million children enrolled in primary schools.

Education is central to the Irish Aid programme because it helps eradicate poverty and hunger and builds the knowledge and skills people require to build better lives. The 2006 White Paper on Irish Aid recognised education as a fundamental human right. Building on this, Irish Aid's education policy has a strong focus on building sustainable education systems to deliver good quality education. Through Irish Aid, we have provided a total of €48.7 million on education programmes in developing countries in 2010.

Our education policy is implemented through a number of different channels. At global level Ireland is a significant contributor to the Global Partnership for Education, GPE, and we will provide approximately €4 million this year. The GPE supports the implementation of education plans in more than 45 countries, many of them emerging from conflicts or natural disasters and in great need of assistance. Another key part of the work of the GPE is getting more girls into school.

We also work directly with education sectors in four of our nine priority countries. Working with partner governments to build the infrastructure, skills and systems is a key priority. For example in 2010, some €26 million was provided to Uganda, Mozambique, Lesotho and Zambia. In these countries good partnerships have been developed between the education sectors and Irish Aid country teams. They are working to ensure the quality of education continues to improve and greater equity in access to education services is achieved. In addition to working with governments, Irish Aid provides assistance to civil society partners such as Concern and Plan Ireland for education projects in fragile states and for improving access to education for disabled children.

As the House is aware, we are reviewing the White Paper on Irish Aid and have been consulting widely. One of the key messages from the public consultation is that there is strong public support for our focus on education, and a view that it reflects our values and our experiences as a people. I am committed to ensuring that education will continue to be a priority area for the Government's aid programme in the years ahead.

Dan Neville (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response. We should acknowledge that earlier this year Irish Aid was recognised as being second best in the field of international aid after the World Bank, which is an enormous compliment. Will the Minister of State ensure we use our influence to support the new global fund for education for all? Ireland must use its influence in multilateral organisations such as the IMF and the World Bank to ensure their policies and practices are aligned to the achievement of the education for all goals.

We must ensure Irish overseas development aid does not focus on numbers enrolled to the detriment of education quality. The key to quality education is properly trained teachers whose conditions and levels of remuneration ensure their retention. Ireland must emphasise education quality and ensure we address teacher recruitment, training and development in the Third World, and the need to recruit and retain female teachers, teachers with disabilities and teachers from other marginalised groups to provide role models for excluded children in the Third World. This group includes girls, children and adults with disabilities, child labourers and children and adults affected or displaced by conflict or climate change. Ireland must commit to demand-side strategies, such as the abolition of school fees, and push for a similar commitment among partner governments and other donors. Such strategies would help vulnerable groups to access quality education. Internationally, Ireland must commit to the educational inclusion of everyone of everyone in the Third World. It is a key part of the future development of the Third World. As someone who came through the Irish educational system at a time when this country was on the verge of Third World status, I am aware of the part it played in ensuring Ireland is a First World country today. Education is one of the keys to saving the Third World.

Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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I agree with everything the Deputy has said. Anyone who was born and raised in Ireland will recognise the importance of education in the progress this country has made. Irish parents, like the country as a whole, have always emphasised the importance of education. For that reason, we have no choice other than to introduce the same key principle to our overseas development aid programme. Between 10% and 12% of our overseas aid is spent on education. I am sure education will remain a key principle when the review of the White Paper has been completed. We recognise it as a fundamental right and we will continue to do so. Ireland's expenditure on education as part of overseas development is well above the OECD average. I accept that 61 million young people around the world do not go to school. At least three times as many young people are getting a poor quality of education. Given that difficulties are encountered by many people when they try to go to school, particularly girls, we are concentrating on gender equity in education. We will increase further the number of fellowships for people from Third World countries who wish to come to Ireland to receive a high level of training and education before going back to their own countries to train people in the same way. We are also looking at how best to use the large cohort of people who retired early in February. Some 2,000 of the 8,000 people who retired from the public sector at that time had been working in the education sector. We want to see how best we can harness the information, professionalism and managerialism they have in their areas of expertise. We will try to find new ways of providing skills in countries where training and education are needed and where managerial skills might not be widely available. We are focusing on and doing a great deal. Ireland will continue to regard education as a key principle of our overseas development aid.