Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Question 53: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs if he supports the UN millennium development goals to tackle global hunger; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [6660/11]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were agreed by world leaders at the United Nations in 2000 as the framework for international development policy up to 2015. For the first time the MDGs provide a clearly measurable way in which the world can track progress in relation to reducing global poverty. Last September, the MDG Review Summit in New York assessed progress against each of the Goals and set out the measures required for their achievement by 2015.

Hunger is one of the key determinants of poverty and exclusion. The first MDG aims to halve the proportion of people suffering from poverty and hunger. Yet almost one billion people go hungry each evening. This is unacceptable. As a result of the work of the Hunger Task Force, reducing hunger has been placed as a key pillar of Ireland's development cooperation policy and indeed foreign policy. In Ireland this is an issue which has garnered support right across the political spectrum. The Government will continue to ensure that hunger remains at the forefront of our development efforts in the years ahead.

In particular I would emphasise the close cooperation we have with the US in advancing this priority. At the recent St Patrick's Day meetings in Washington the Taoiseach and President Obama discussed hunger. The Tanaiste and Secretary of State Clinton also discussed the matter and agreed to work closely in the coming months to galvanise action, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, to combat under-nutrition in pregnant women and infants. We are also working closely with our EU partners to advance the issue. In my role as Minister of State with responsibility for development I intend to visit a number of our Programme Countries in the coming months to see what more Ireland can do to prioritise this issue and to strengthen our work on hunger.

The Government remains strongly committed to working with our partners for the achievement of the MDGs, with a strong focus on sub-Saharan Africa and on the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger.