Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)
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Question 13: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the position regarding work towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals. [5217/09]

Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)
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The eight Millennium Development Goals, adopted by Heads of Government at the Millennium Summit in 2000, provide the framework for international economic and social development over fifteen years, to 2015. Most importantly, they represent a series of commitments on development by the international community together with a set of specific targets against which to measure progress in the reduction of global poverty. The Government's aid programme, implemented by Irish Aid, is centrally based on the commitment to the reduction of poverty and hunger in the developing world.

The Taoiseach, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and I attended the high-level event at the UN in New York last September, at which leaders from national Governments, civil society and the private sector recommitted themselves to this ambitious set of targets. We recognised then that further international efforts were required if the Goals were to be achieved in full. Since then, the scale of the challenge has increased in the face of the global economic crisis. This was recognised at the Review Conference on Financing For Development, which I attended in Doha in November. We are working closely with our EU partners on a strengthened international response to the serious impact of the crisis on the developing countries.

The Government remains determined that Ireland will continue to play an important role in the global effort to combat poverty and hunger. Ireland's aid programme is the sixth most generous in per capita terms internationally. We are taking a lead internationally on the global hunger crisis, highlighting the over-riding importance of the first Millennium Development Goal, to halve the proportion of people living in poverty and hunger by 2015. The Report of the Government's Hunger Task Force was launched at the high level event in New York in September, and was formally presented to the UN Secretary General and to the Taoiseach.

Last month, I responded to and endorsed the recommendations of the Report and stated that the hunger crisis will be a cornerstone of Ireland's development policy. I also announced the appointment of a Special Envoy for Hunger to oversee Ireland's response to the hunger crisis, promoting and assisting efforts at national and international level to reduce hunger and food insecurity.