Vol. 526 No. 6
60 Mr. Bell asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if Ireland proposes to take an international initiative to promote understanding of, and the generation of adequate responses to, the plight of sub-Saharan Africa; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27486/00]
As the Deputy will be aware our engagement with Africa informs every aspect of the Irish Government's development aid programme, and has done so for the last 25 years. All six priority countries for our development assistance lie in sub-Saharan Africa and in this current year it is worth pointing out that close to half of the entire bilateral assistance allocation will be directly expended on programmes in these countries. Regrettably, the sub-Saharan region has also been the focus of extensive Irish humanitarian and emergency assistance, most recently to Ethiopia, due to man-made and natural disasters. With the Government's commitment to reaching the UN development co-operation target of 0.7% of GNP by the end of 2007 – in effect, a four fold increase in our aid expenditure – our priority countries, and Africa in general, will benefit from significantly increased allocations from Ireland Aid in the future.
In addition to increased development assistance, sub-Saharan Africa needs advocates to promote its cause in the appropriate international fora. With our commitment to the UN target for aid, Ireland can now do this to an even greater extent than previously. The fact that African states were very supportive of our successful candidacy for the UN Security Council reflects the depth of our African partnership inter alia and the high quality of Ireland Aid's African interventions. Our membership of the Security Council will be strongly focused on Africa and we will also continue, in this and other fora, to engage with our EU partners on issues such as extreme poverty, globalisation, the scourge of HIV-AIDS, the unacceptable debt burden and other factors which impact on the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.
