Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Question 64: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the work of the Hunger Task Force of Irish Aid; the action being undertaken by this taskforce; the impact budget cutbacks will have on the operation and running of the taskforce; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15364/09]

Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)
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The report of the Hunger Task Force, which was published in September 2008, recommended that Ireland can contribute to tackling the root causes of hunger by increasing the productivity of smallholder farmers in Africa, by implementing programmes on maternal and infant under-nutrition and by ensuring that there is committed political action at national and international levels to give world hunger the priority it deserves.

I have welcomed this focused approach by the Task Force on these three thematic areas and have also announced that the eradication of hunger will become a key component of the Irish Aid programme.

With the aim of moving the recommendations of the Hunger Task Force forward, I have established a special Hunger Unit in my Department to coordinate the implementation of the Hunger Task Force recommendations across Irish Aid's programmes and policy areas. I have also established a managerial task team to bring together the full range of expertise available within the Development Co-operation Directorate (Irish Aid) in the area of food security and related disciplines and also including representatives from other Departments, including the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, to oversee the implementation of the recommendations.

A Special Envoy for Hunger, Mr. Kevin Farrell, has been appointed. He will assess the national and international response to the global food security crisis. We will use his enormous experience with the World Food Programme to support our hunger reduction interventions.

I am keen to see the development of a new international partnership that puts hunger at the top of the political and development agenda. Ireland is actively working with the UN Secretary General's High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis. We were the first country to provide funding to this key UN Task Force.

Irish Aid is currently supporting, and will continue to support, a whole range of hunger related interventions in our priority countries in Africa. We are supporting smallholder agriculture – most notably in Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique and in our new programme in Sierra Leone. We are supporting agricultural research and crop and livestock improvement. We are providing safety net programmes – to catch those vulnerable communities before they fall into destitution and hunger through food-for-work or money-for-work programmes. We are supporting ground-breaking initiatives on nutrition such as Concern's Community Based Therapeutic Feeding initiative. In our most recently established programme country, Malawi, Irish Aid is currently supporting, and will continue to support, a whole range of hunger related interventions in our priority countries in Africa. We are supporting smallholder agriculture – most notably in Tanzania, Malawi, and Mozambique and in our new programme in Sierra Leone. We are supporting agricultural research and crop and livestock improvement. We are providing safety net programmes – to catch those vulnerable communities before they fall into destitution and hunger through food-for-work or money-for-work programmes. We are supporting ground-breaking initiatives on nutrition such as Concern's Community Based Therapeutic Feeding initiative. In our most recently established programme country, Malawi, we are developing a new programme that is fundamentally influenced by the recommendations of the Hunger Task Force. We are working towards spending up to 20 per cent of our aid programme on hunger and hunger related projects and programmes as recommended by the Hunger Task Force. I expect that we will reach this target by the end of 2010 and additional funding is being provided for hunger related programmes.