Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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724. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade if he will be present for any part of the financing for development summit in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia; and his Department's key proposals. [28361/15]

Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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This week’s Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa is the first of three major inter-linked global conferences on sustainable development this year. The others will be on a new framework for global development at the UN in New York in September and on a new climate change agreement in Paris in December. Taken together, they aim to deliver a new and transformative sustainable development agenda, with Sustainable Development Goals, up to 2030. My colleague, the Minister of State for Development, Trade Promotion and North-South cooperation, Seán Sherlock T.D., is leading the Irish delegation in Addis, which also includes representatives of the Oireachtas and civil society. Ireland is playing a strong international role in the overall process to agree a new framework for global development to succeed the Millennium Development Goals. The contours of agreement at Addis will need to be broad if they are to support the new set of Sustainable Development Goals to be adopted at the Summit at the UN in New York. Official Development Assistance (ODA) will be a vitally important element of the package, but agreement will also be needed on a much wider range of resources for development. It will be important that allparties contribute on an equitable basis and that we also look at measures to unlock all available sources of financing. These must include domestic resource mobilisation, the most rapidly growing component of development finance over the last decade, taxation, science and technology and ways of involving the private sector as inclusive partners in development. While ODA will not be sole focus of negotiations at Addis, it remains particularly important for the fight to end poverty in the Least Developed Countries. The Government remains firmly committed to the 0.7% target for ODA and to making further progress towards it as our economic recovery consolidates. Ireland played a vital role in the reconfirmation of the EU’s collective commitment to reaching the 0.7% target within the timeframe of the post-2015 agenda when Development Ministers met at the Council meeting on 26^thMay. The EU also agreed on the need to direct more aid to the Least Developed Countries, and especially to the poorest African countries. Ireland is a world leader in the proportion of our aid which we provide to the poorest countries.

Ireland is committed to working with our EU and UN partners to secure an inclusive agreement at Addis that will support the new, transformative Sustainable Development Goals.