Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)
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Question 45: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the number of personnel employed in his Department to work on overseas development aid matters; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26889/05]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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A total of 161 officers are assigned to the development co-operation directorate at headquarters, to the bilateral aid missions in Africa and Asia and to development desks at our multilateral missions to the UN in New York and Geneva, to the OECD in Paris and to the EU in Brussels. The headquarters staffing complement comprises 99 general and diplomatic service officers and 26 specialists. There are 19 specialists and 17 general and diplomatic service officers serving abroad. Some 250 local staff are employed by our missions on the ground to deal with a variety of tasks ranging from project implementation, monitoring and accounting to security, transport and other support services.

Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 46: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the level of support given by Development Co-operation Ireland towards education programmes around the world; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [26914/05]

Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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Education is one of the most important instruments for reducing poverty and inequality and for laying the basis for sustained economic growth. The importance of every child in every country having the opportunity to complete primary school education forms the basis of the Dakar framework for action agreed in Senegal at the World Education Forum in 2000. The goals agreed in Dakar were reaffirmed as part of the UN's millennium summit in September 2000. Ireland is deeply committed to contributing to the attainment by 2015 of universal primary education for boys and girls everywhere.

Since the early 1990s basic education has been a priority area of the Government's official development co-operation programme. Over 13% of the entire programme is focused on supporting education. Most of this support is delivered at country level, with a smaller proportion of funding directed to global and regional education initiatives. Our overall aim is to assist partner countries to build sustainable education systems appropriate to the needs of the people and the country. While subscribing to the goals and targets set internationally, we support the achievement of locally set objectives which are developed in consultation with stakeholders in education in-country.

Our approach in the education sector recognises that basic education is the fundamental building block to participation in all levels of education and that the inter-linkages between the different levels of education are becoming more apparent. Expanding secondary education is now considered to be essential to motivate children to complete primary school and therefore be able to access secondary school. In addition, secondary education has been shown to be effective in preventing the spread of HIV-AIDS.

Support to education will therefore remain a priority for the development programme. Investment in education in Ireland has provided the basis of much of our recent success. In the developing world, our support to education is a reflection of our own experience and our belief that it is one of the basic pillars of social and economic development.