Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Question 151: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs his plans to implement the recommendations of the recently published task force report on hunger; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34094/08]

Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)
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The current escalation in world food prices has highlighted the importance of food security. The establishment of the Hunger Task Force was a key recommendation of the White Paper on Irish Aid which was published before the onset of the current crisis. We established it because we knew from our people on the ground in developing countries that hunger was increasing — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and that many countries would fail to achieve the Millennium Hunger Goal which is "to reduce by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger by 2015".

The Hunger Task Force submitted its report on 25 September to the Taoiseach at the recent UN Millennium Summit in New York. I would like to pay tribute to our former colleague Joe Walsh who did a splendid job in chairing this group of national and international experts and to record my gratitude to every member of the Task Force for their diligent work in producing this report. The report has been circulated to all members of the Oireachtas and copies placed in the library.

The Report makes disturbing reading. It is a disgrace that in 2008 there are more than 862 million people who do not have enough to eat. At the presentation of the report, Bono, who was a member of the Task Force, pointed out that this figure was already out of date, and that the current figure is approaching 900 million and rising — driven by the continuing escalation in global food prices.

The report of the Task Force is timely and I welcome its focus on three key areas:

To follow through on commitments made by all Governments, both donor Governments and Governments of developing countries and to increase the priority given to hunger in the aid programme

to target smallholder agricultural productivity; and

to promote effective actions to counter maternal and infant under-nutrition.

As an initial response I am establishing a new section which, inter alia, will have a special dedicated focus on food security tasked with advancing our work on addressing hunger.

Hunger is a complex issue and the Task Force have made detailed recommendations. Our first task will be to carry out a careful analysis of the recommendations, and of the extent to which current aid programming is responding to the many facets of hunger. Once that exercise has been completed, we will be in a position to plan how we can strengthen our efforts to address the root causes of hunger, with a view to making a real and lasting contribution to the abolition of hunger from our world.