Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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890. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the steps that have been taken to strengthen common efforts by the Irish and British Governments to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and to end the scourge of global hunger and poor nutrition; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22304/15]

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Global hunger and malnutrition are acknowledged as some of the most severe global development challenges today. Over 800 million people are estimated to be hungry in the world and under-nutrition is the biggest underlying cause of death in children under the age of five, causing 8,000 child deaths each day. The eradication of hunger and malnutrition is a cornerstone of Ireland’s development aid programme and central to Ireland’s foreign policy values. Ireland’s continued commitment is set out in our Policy for International Development, "One World, One Future" and in our Foreign Policy document "The Global Island". Overall, 20% of the development budget managed by Irish Aid is directed to the fight against hunger and under-nutrition, including through promotion of smallholder agricultural production and support for women’s empowerment. We focus particularly on the challenge of improving maternal and child nutrition in the world’s poorest countries. Ireland is committed to increasing political will and investment to address under-nutrition in developing countries, and we have developed a strong and active partnership on this challenge with the United Kingdom.

Ireland and the UK work closely in our support for the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement which seeks to improve maternal, infant and child nutrition.

During Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union in 2013, the UK supported Ireland’s initiative to highlight the linked challenges of hunger, malnutrition and climate change. In turn, Ireland was a core partner on the UK’s G8 Presidency "Nutrition for Growth" event in London in June 2013. My officials worked closely with their British counterparts to help secure ambitious policy and financing commitments from high level participants to tackle under-nutrition. During this London meeting, the Taoiseach pledged that Ireland will double its expenditure on nutrition by 2020, and we are on track to fulfil this commitment.

In this important year for international development, my Department is collaborating closely with the UK, in our role in co-facilitating, with the Government of Kenya, the process at the UN for the development of Sustainable Development Goals. These negotiations will deliver a new global framework to succeed the Millennium Development Goals, with the goal of ending extreme poverty and hunger by 2030. We will continue our close partnership with the UK on advancing this shared and critical objective.