Grace Boland (Dublin Fingal West, Fine Gael)
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244. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the measures Ireland is taking to support women and girls in the developing world; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27353/25]

Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Ireland is ranked by the OECD Development Assistance Committee as among the member countries with the highest share of Official Development Assistance with gender equality objectives. We fund interventions directly dedicated to supporting women’s political and economic empowerment; prioritising girls’ access to quality education; addressing gender based violence; and improving women and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health care and rights.

It is the case that those most affected by humanitarian crises are women and girls. Recognising this disproportionate impact, Ireland prioritizes life-saving reproductive health and protection services for women and girls and the prevention of gender-based violence in emergencies through our humanitarian response.

Improved access to maternal health and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care is fundamental to transforming women and girls’ health outcomes. In 2023, we launched a €25 million, three-year initiative on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, to consolidate Ireland’s long-standing support for measures to tackle sexual and gender-based violence, improve maternal health, and end the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In line with our commitment to increase direct funding to women’s rights organisations to support their critical work in their local communities, we last year launched two new partnerships of €1 million each. They work to resource women-led organisations’ engagement on climate justice and to provide rapid response grants to women human rights defenders in crises.

We remain firmly committed to promoting gender equality and to improving the rights and livelihoods of women and girls as central priorities for our international development programme.