I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Peter Power, to discuss what progress his Department has made on implementing the key recommendations made in the hunger task force report. I also welcome Mr. Tony Cotter and congratulate him on his recent appointment as ambassador to Zambia. As the Minister of State will be aware, representatives of the hunger task force, including its chairman, Mr. Joe Walsh, attended a full meeting of the joint committee in December. During our discussion, they indicated they did not know how far the Government would go in implementing the recommendations of the task force. Since then, the Minister has appointed Mr. Kevin Farrell as hunger advocate. I ask the Minister of State to make his presentation, after which we will have a discussion of its details.
Hunger Task Force Report: Discussion with Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
I thank the Chairman and members of the sub-committee for the time and effort they have invested in analysing the report and tracking its progress towards implementation. I understand the Chairman of the hunger task force, Mr. Joe Walsh, and some of his distinguished colleagues made a presentation to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs. I propose to brief the sub-committee on how the Department is progressing the recommendations of the task force report.
Significant developments have occurred since the task force made its presentation in December. Last month, for example, I made a presentation in Government Buildings setting out the Government's response to the hunger task force report. I stated that the eradication of hunger would be a cornerstone of the Irish aid programme and key component of Irish foreign policy. This was a significant first step in the response to the report.
While the report makes many key recommendations, it also makes the important observation that famine and hunger occur because they are allowed to occur. The Irish Famine of 160 years ago was also allowed to happen, through a failure of governance and policy and a lack of political will. This is the reason that 160 years later, there is a sense of anger and frustration in Ireland that the causes of the Great Hunger, which resonates to this day, are creating hunger and famine in the world today despite the enormous technological advances we have made. Since the 1840s, we have overcome many obstacles facing mankind in terms of disease, technology and global communications, yet we cannot come to grips with the most fundamental of problems, how to feed the people of the planet.
The statistics on hunger are shocking. When the hunger task force was completed last June it was estimated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation that 862 million people did not have enough food to eat. When the report was presented to the Taoiseach and UN Secretary General at the United Nations in September, this figure had increased dramatically to 925 million because of rising food prices. Today, almost 1 billion people do not have enough food to eat. To put this figure in context, it is 250 times the population of the State, which means that for every child being fed here each morning, 250 children elsewhere in the world will not be fed properly. One must consider the issue in that context to fully appreciate its scale.
The first of the millennium development goals to which Ireland signed up nine years ago was to reduce by half the proportion of those suffering from hunger throughout the world. Not alone have we failed to reduce the figure by half but it continues to increase dramatically. This constitutes a major failure on the part of the international community, including this country.
Last week, I visited Ethiopia. While I will not discuss in detail the programme Irish Aid has in that country — we may have further opportunities to do so — it was clear that despite the enormous progress the country has made, largely supported by Irish Aid and the Irish taxpayer, the dividing line between food security and insecurity is wafer thin and fragile. The capacity of people to move from food security to insecurity is enormous, as demonstrated by figures produced by the Food and Agriculture Organisation in recent months. In response to these statistics, Irish Aid and the Government have made a clear policy choice to reorient the aid programme to ensure resources are effectively deployed and allocated in the fight against global hunger. This was identified in the Irish Aid White Paper. In that sense, we were far-sighted in identifying this and having in place a task force to deal with it.
The recommendations of the hunger task force have been set out in the report which is a wake-up call for Ireland and all other donor governments in the developed world. It does not pull any punches and is not written in diplomatic language. It has brevity and clarity in its message which resonates beyond Ireland in international fora. I have noted at various fora I have attended at EU and UN level that many donor countries speak about the Irish lead in tackling hunger.
A key message from the report is the necessity to summon the global political will to turn commitments and policy positions into co-ordinated action to save lives. If Ireland can contribute by taking a lead role by showing how focused our programme is and having it used as a model, we will have made a significant contribution. Unequivocally, the eradication of hunger is a cornerstone of Ireland's development aid programme and a key component of our foreign policy. We will take a strong leadership and advocacy role internationally in tackling the root causes of hunger. We will contribute to global efforts to reduce and eradicate this scourge. We welcome the overall thrust of the report which provides us with an excellent framework in which to guide our response to address global hunger and food insecurity.
The report has three thematic areas — increasing smallholder agricultural productivity in Africa; targeting maternal and infant malnutrition and under-nutrition; and to give hunger the priority it deserves. After receiving the report at the United Nations, I set up a special task team in the Department to bring together the full range of expertise available across various Departments, including the Departments of Finance and Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The team will ensure we follow up on our commitments with a coherent whole-of-government response. A detailed analysis using the report's recommendations has been carried out on existing programmes to eradicate hunger. Ireland is doing well in comparison with other countries. Much is being done to support emergency feeding programmes and support smallholder agricultural productivity, most notably in Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique.
The report is critical of the lack of focus and co-ordinated effort at international level. However, it compliments those governments which have made the right policy choices and highlights where programmes have been successful such as those in Malawi, Tanzania, Brazil and Vietnam. It points out that smallholder agricultural productivity in Asia has increased enormously due to the right policies, whereas in Africa where the right policies were not adopted it has decreased.
When the report was published, we invited all governments and non-governmental organisations involved in the eradication of world hunger to use it to inform their programmes. At EU ministerial Council level I have worked to have the eradication of world hunger placed on the EU agenda and invited our European partners to take the report to see how it can inform their programmes. We are encouraging our partner countries to deliver at least 10% of their total budgets on the development of agriculture and increasing agricultural productivity and food security.
Irish Aid is supporting moves to address the lack of coherence in the international architecture on hunger eradication. This includes support for the UN Secretary General's high level task force on the global food crisis established in 2008. I had the opportunity to give the keynote address at the high level conference on hunger recently held by the task force. I have tasked Irish Aid to use the report to examine our individual programmes at bilateral and multilateral level to ensure they are delivering in the eradication of world hunger. If a programme does this, we will support it; if not, we must examine it further.
We have taken up the key recommendation of the report to appoint a special envoy, Mr. Kevin Farrell. This will allow an independent but expert examination of how the recommendations are being implemented. I look forward to working with Mr. Farrell in the next 18 months. We can report to the sub-committee on how the recommendations are being implemented. We would also welcome its input in this regard.
I welcome the Minister of State to the sub-committee. I want to be associated with the good wishes to Mr. Farrell on his appointment as special envoy for hunger. Fine Gael welcomes the report and we hope the recommendations will be implemented. We see the eradication of hunger as paramount and it should be aligned with education as the two main planks in dealing with poverty.
It is a little disappointing to hear that, despite billions having gone to aid in the past 50 years, the number of people going to bed hungry at night has increased to almost 1 billion. This can be disheartening and would make one wonder about the effectiveness of the money that has been spent on aid.
I welcome the Minister of State's commitment to proof every programme through the prism of the hunger task force report, which is a good way to progress. It is also important that we proof policies across other areas in terms of their impact or otherwise on food poverty. I am talking here about our approach to GM foods and bio-fuels, for example, because there can often be unintended consequences which can cause greater difficulty than the problem they set out to deal with.
I have some general questions for the Minister of State and some more closely related to the topic. With regard to the implementation of this report, does the Minister of State envisage separate funding being allocated for this or is it just a change in policy with regard to the money available at present? In these increasingly difficult times, the people who suffer most due to the global economic downturn are those who have never benefited from the benefits of globalisation, namely, the poor. As the economies of the world contract, the amount of money they are getting in support will obviously contract also.
There will also be greater scrutiny from the public as to where this money will be spent. I am sure Irish Aid is an easy target, as perhaps evidenced by the recent cutback of €95 million. First, how will this be funded? Will money be moved from other areas and will the policy in other areas change as a result? Second, has the Minister thought in general of ways to protect funding for overseas aid, or of how he might try to sell the issue of Irish aid being used abroad in a better manner?
While I do not know whether it will work and I have not proofed it, one of the ideas I have put forward is to try to use some of those with expertise in this country so that instead of joining the dole queue here, we could consider getting them tied in with the aid agencies. For example, a plumber, electrician or person involved in education could be provided in one of the programme countries, although I understand there is opposition to this and that aid agencies would see this as being tied aid. Does the Minister of State have a view as to whether it would be of benefit and make it more publicly acceptable if the expenditure of the money would also benefit our own people as well as those abroad?
I am not a supporter of tied aid and I do not want to confuse this with it. It is basically an expansion of the rapid reaction force, or whatever the name is of the group set up by the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, perhaps the rapid response——
I got into trouble for calling it the rapid reaction force when I said we were sending it into Georgia. Sky News had it that we were sending in the troops. My colleague, the Minister for Defence, was very concerned.
We know the Minister, Deputy O'Dea, is quite volatile.
I believe there is merit in examining the rapid response unit, notwithstanding that aid agencies would try to hammer us. Six or seven years ago we were spending €150 million or €200 million on aid but it is now €800 million.
I have always believed decentralisation to the Minister of State's native city of Limerick meant the expertise which had been built up in the Department over a long period was lost. Perhaps the Minister of State can confirm that those who are located in Irish Aid in Limerick are taking, or will soon take, a course at the University of Limerick on how to get value for aid money. If the Minister of State is aware of this, he might drop me a note on whether there is a basis to it. It is a concern.
I thank Deputy Timmins for his contribution. In general, I agree with him that we must question why, despite the enormous funding provided in the past 30 or 40 years, the numbers are going in the wrong direction. I would go back to the point that this represents a major failure of the international community and of focus and concentration on this area. To give just one statistic, some 30 years ago, 20% of all international aid and development went straight to agriculture and the production of food. That percentage is now down to 4% of all aid, which is a shocking statistic. We are encouraging our partners to increase that figure and, while we do not have a precise figure, we are significantly higher than that. Nonetheless, it is an issue on which we need to focus. This is essentially what the report is about.
On the Deputy's questions with regard to separate funding, there are two elements to this issue. On the first, Malawi is a good example of one of our programme countries. A major proportion of the €10 million in our bilateral aid programme with Malawi is to support an intensive government-backed input subsidisation scheme, which basically provides fertilizer for smallholder agricultural producers. The productive capacity of the agriculture sector in Malawi has increased enormously in recent years and it really is a shining example of what can be done with relatively small amounts of money.
Second, there will be specific funding. I have allocated €5 million to progress the agenda generally although it is not specifically related to aid to particular countries or bodies. Within the different funding streams, be it through civil society or our bilateral aid and the various themes in which we work, the money must be spent with a focus on hunger. There will be a shift within those individual funding streams. I hope that answers the Deputy's question in this area.
I agree with the Deputy with regard to expertise. There should not be any difficulty with regard to Irish people who want to engage in development issues and who have particular expertise. We should encourage this in every way and no one should be afraid of it. We have a long history and tradition in this country with regard to international aid and development. Now, when people may not be so frenetically busy as they were in years gone by, we should tap into that. Only yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet the Law Society and the Bar Council, which have at present many underemployed, if I can put like that, professionals who have a high capacity to engage in the field in various areas such as governance, policy coherence and rule of law projects. They are at our disposal and are willing to go out into the field. This should be tapped into.
As the Deputy will be aware, I have instituted in recent months the junior professional internship, which is to take postgraduates who have an interest in development issues and invite them to work in Irish Aid or in the field. We can tap into people who have youth, enthusiasm and academic or professional qualifications, and use them and leverage their expertise and enthusiasm, although not at huge salaries. We have invested significantly in the rapid response corps and its personnel can be deployed to difficult areas.
I accept the Deputy's point regarding tied aid. Fine Gael has for many years endorsed the fundamental principle of our programme that aid should be completely untied.
I do not entirely agree with the Deputy in regard to personnel because we have recruited a further 12 development specialists. These staff, who were badly needed, have expertise in various areas but with a focus on hunger. I do not think the organisation suffered a loss of corporate memory, to use the latest terminology. The loss of Mr. Cotter is the exception to that.
Are the staff in Limerick participating in courses on development aid?
I am not specifically aware of that but I have encouraged close collaboration between Irish Aid and the University of Limerick for obvious reasons. That does not detract from the agency's existing close collaboration with other third level institutions under our development education budget.
Are the civil servants who moved to Limerick taking a training course in aid?
I may be incorrect.
I will forward precise details of the matter to the sub-committee. The University of Limerick has taken a number of development initiatives in peace and reconciliation and other areas. I understand it is offering a course in development in which staff from Irish Aid will be invited to participate. I emphasise there will be no cost to the programme or to Irish Aid. It is a welcome opportunity.
Notwithstanding the appointment of Mr. Kevin Farrell as a hunger envoy and the requirement on departmental staff to determine how the recommendations of the hunger task force can fit in with their work, a cynic would say the plans remain abstract. If one visits Irish Aid's website and clicks the link to the hunger task force, which the Minister of State says will take a leadership role internationally, point No. 3, the recommendation to direct 20% to hunger by 2012, is skipped over. Nobody has given me an answer in regard to progress towards that goal. The report was launched in September 2008. The Minister of State spoke about persuading our European partners to adopt a figure of 10% with regard to their budgets on hunger. Where are we in terms of investing more of our aid money in fighting hunger and why is the Minister of State now proposing a figure of 10%?
I do not agree with the Chairman in regard to the abstract nature of our plans. If that is the perception, however, we will work to change it. I am keen to avoid working in abstracts because we have spent a lot of time developing these recommendations and we intend this report to become a working, living document rather than sit on a shelf and gather dust. I have chaired sessions of the task team and have regularly challenged its members to outline their activities on hunger and to quantify our spending on hunger and agricultural productivity.
During my tour of Ethiopia, I visited Tigray, the epicentre of the famine in the 1980s, and stood in a field which five years ago resembled a landscape on Venus or Mars. It was rocky, unproductive land but, by building breakwater dams in the mountains, Irish Aid has managed to gradually build up the groundwater level. The farmers of the area told us they begged the regional authority and its president, Tsegaye Berhe, to relocate them because they believed nobody could live on the land. Through the efforts of Irish Aid, we stood in fields which now support 5,000 families, or 20,000 people, for a very low investment of €150,000. That is but one of Irish Aid's 1,462 projects in Ethiopia.
It is not an abstraction, therefore, because we are focusing on policies which increase food production. This report addresses the question of how Ireland's aid, and donor aid generally, can be used to produce more food. The planet's population, currently 7 billion, continues to increase at a rapid rate and we are still chasing that curve. How will we be able to feed an additional 3 billion people when, due to global warming, there is less space on which to grow food? That is why our focus must be on that area.
The figure of 20% was an indicative target set out in the hunger task force report. We aspire to that target but we are currently ascertaining the precise figure for the existing proportion of Irish Aid's funding which is focused on hunger. I will revert to the committee with the exact figure but we may already be close to the 20% target. The OECD's development assistance committee has commended Irish Aid on its effectiveness on the ground. The reason I mentioned a figure of 10% is because while the report is most relevant to Ireland, I have asked my European colleagues to spend at least 10% of their aid budgets on the production of food. Although we cannot be prescriptive, we can advocate and set best practice guidelines. By demonstrating the effectiveness of our assistance in our partner developing countries in terms of contributing towards a massive increase in agricultural and food production, we can encourage our colleagues to follow our example. That is why the report repeatedly emphasises that somebody has to take the lead by calling this a scandal and calling for an end to it. Ireland has taken an important leadership role in that regard. We are 4 million out of 400 million people in Europe but if we can leverage our example to encourage others to focus on this area, we will have done a good job.
One of the major issues is the European Union's trade policies which cause serious difficulty with the developing world because for every dollar in aid we give, our trade policies affect developing countries to the tune of $3. If one cannot export the food one produces, one can never escape poverty. I will raise an issue that is not quite related to the hunger task force but may be in the future. Yesterday I had the opportunity to meet a man named Cinay Nair from County Limerick. He spent ten years there, then went to Trinity College, Dublin and now works for the William J. Clinton Foundation. Next weekend he will travel to Mozambique to work on its micro-financing project to try to establish it on a national level. He said he was fearful that the credit crunch we had experienced was about to happen in the micro-financing world. That might seem curious and I found it very unusual.
In India, as in Africa, it is very difficult to distinguish between micro-financiers and moneylenders. One of the major problems with micro-financiers is that they are paid commission and they are lending recklessly, whether it is $20 or $100, to people who do not have a valid idea that will work but who are putting themselves into debt that will ultimately affect their families and their ability to feed themselves. That brings me to the point of the hunger task force. As Mr. Nair explains it, the micro-financing world is a juggernaut in that it will be difficult to stop it imploding. He is talking about a period of six, nine or 12 months when micro-financing might no longer happen but will explode in the same way as we have seen here on the news morning, noon and night. We experience it every day in Ireland. This is an underlying issue about which we are not hearing but which he expects to blow up relatively shortly.
I ask the Minister of State, through his good offices, to bring the issue to a more global level because if micro-financing is to go the way the world economy has gone, the hunger task force will have a serious challenge in nine to 12 months time when all the people mentioned who should not have been given the money are in trouble. We see it every day in America and Ireland. People were given money because micro-financiers were receiving commission and not being prudent in giving loans. The loan provider is happier giving more loans and receiving commission on each one, even if a proportion are defaulted on and the borrowers are in a situation they should not be in in terms of debt. It is a huge issue and the knock-on effect is hunger because the recipients of inappropriate loans will not be able to feed their families. Because Mr. Nair is from the William J. Clinton Foundation I have great respect for anything he says. He has done much research and used to work in banking. It seems he got out of it at the right time. It seems to be a juggernaut and there may be something we can do at UN level. Deflecting a juggernaut is not easy but we should examine the issue before it crashes. We have enough difficulties sorting out our financial problems without having to do it for microfinancing.
I understand the Senator's point. In the developed world we are familiar with the credit crunch and hear of the lack of finance day in, day out. In the developing world access to micro-credit and micro-finance can be the difference between making a smallholder or farmer effective and productive or not. There are colossal challenges across the developing world in accessing micro-finance. An enormous amount of work and effort is going into the matter of how to increase the level of micro-finance to smallholder farmers throughout Africa, many of whom are women. There are problems around land tenure and many cannot give security for loans. Many problems with the credit crunch are filtering through. We heard this in Ethiopia only last week. It is rippling across the world and nobody is immune. Small banks in developing countries have less access to credit and are less likely to be able to release money for micro-finance projects. However, that is just one of a number of issues contributing to the inability to make smallholder farmers more productive.
The vast proportion of food produced in sub-Saharan Africa is produced on farms of less then one hectare. These are very small holdings and their biggest problem is not farm waste management schemes, etc., but trying to get tools and small amounts of fertilizer to make their small plots productive. They can get this through government subsidised schemes or through their own resources, selling their produce in local markets, or by accessing credit such as micro-finance. It is a very difficult and troublesome issue.
I take on board the points made, that the credit squeeze will eventually choke the availability of such finance and that we will engage with the UN high level task force on hunger, one of the bodies we are supporting arising from the report, to examine initiatives we can take at country level to encourage smallholder productivity. This goes beyond the agricultural inputs to getting the right feeds for the right microclimate in certain areas. It also means investing. The Chairman asked about abstract issues. In our programme countries we will spend increasing amounts of money on research to ensure a smallholder has the right seed to produce a higher yielding crop on his or her land. These are tangible and concrete actions we can take. That is why when we examine the budget for one of our bilateral countries, we ask how we can spend money in that area rather than others.
We cannot exclude spending on items such as health, education and HIV-AIDS. One has to spend money, particularly on primary education for uneducated, poor female farmers. A female farmer who is pregnant at 14 years of age is not a productive one; therefore, they must be educated on gender issues. A farmer with HIV-AIDS cannot farm; therefore, we must concentrate on other areas also. Millennium development goal No. 1 is the elimination of poverty and hunger. None of the other goals regarding HIV-AIDS, primary education and health care is realisable if people are dead. That is why we must focus on this issue.
I thank the Minister of State. The point being made by the man from the William J. Clinton Foundation is that it is the current policy of reckless lending by micro-financiers that could ultimately cause more problems. He is supposed to come back to me on the issue as he will see it in Mozambique when he gets there next week. The issue is on a more global level. Getting the money out is one thing but giving it to the wrong people — those who have no chance of ever paying it back — drives the poorest of the poor into more poverty.
There is a fine line between micro-financing and moneylending. As we have seen, regulations in this country are not exactly world class so one can only imagine what it is like in the Third World where there is more ambiguity. The point is that there is a sense of urgency in what is happening in the world of micro-finance.
If the Government is to bring it up at the UN level, it should indicate that we must consider the matter before the juggernaut crashes. We should consider the problems with micro-financing. It should never be commission-based because this is part of the problem in lending the money.
On that point, I assure the Senator that no Irish aid channelled for micro-financing is done on a commission basis. It is all channelled through co-operatives and other areas rather than commission. That is not to take away from the Senator's broad point. If the Senator makes that research available to us we will look at it. Irish aid is not going to moneylenders in Third World countries.
That was not the issue at all as I would not even think we would do that. Neither do I believe the William J. Clinton Foundation would ever think it. On a global level, rather than specifically dealing with Irish aid or anything we are doing, the problem seems to have spiralled out of control. We need to act now before we end up with many people in a serious financial position.
The high level task force chaired by Dr. David Nabarro, under the auspices of UN Secretary General Ban, is a mechanism of which we are very supportive internationally. It is considering the important area of the financial mechanisms to deliver aid at country level and regional level within countries. We are a very close partner of the high level task force and have provided funding for that group to undertake its very important work. It brings a global dimension to this.
Many donor countries are working on their bilateral programmes and it is fair to say that as in many endeavours, many countries would have pet projects which are worthy. Most experts in the area would conclude that there has been a dilution of the focus on the production of food for people. To use the Senator's word, we are faced with the juggernaut of population explosion coming down the road and this will be the real problem. If we cannot feed our people now, what will happen in 2030 when we will have an extra 2 billion people?
Is the Minister of State happy that support remains within Government circles for the existing budget? Things are picked up on around these Houses and I am not so sure every Government representative is as committed as they were.
I have said before to the Minister of State that I worry after I speak to Irish Aid officials. Notwithstanding the work done by the Minister of State and the reorganisation completed since he took office, Irish Aid officials believe there is a disconnect between the amazing work done locally and the message sent out to the public from here. Perhaps it comes down to an element of communication.
Is the Minister of State happy that the kind of work being done within Irish Aid is properly represented to the public at this point? As the economy, which is in crisis, gets worse, do we need to work a little harder to represent what people are doing with the hundreds of millions of euro that Ireland spends, especially in sub-Saharan Africa?
We will always sell the message of what we are doing. I provided a number of examples today of the excellent work and effectiveness which is in place.
I noted that and I do not disagree with the Minister of State but what about the selling of it?
The Chairman asked about the commitment. We have signalled very clearly that notwithstanding the severe cuts made right across Departments — which nobody would like and which nobody took lightly — we are in an incredibly severe fiscal position in this country. Unless we take appropriate decisions to get our own finances in order — I say this with real conviction — we will be giving a proportionately bigger slice of a much smaller cake.
The economy contracted last year and it will contract this year and the next. Unless we take decisions now to allow our economy to grow, it will continue to contract, and this is a fundamental economic principle which we failed to recognise in the 1980s. We failed to make the correct decisions then and it took us much longer to get out of it. That is the reason such decisions must be made. The proof of the pudding is that when the economy grew, the aid programme grew at a substantially faster rate than the economy. There must be economic growth for development aid. One cannot borrow indefinitely and borrow to repay borrowings for development aid. In the countries where we work we are practising and preaching sustainable development so we cannot have unsustainable borrowings to fund that development.
On getting the message across, the public has been exceptionally supportive of the Irish Aid programme and will continue to be in good times and bad. People recognise that we are in an incredibly difficult financial position and we must continue to convey that message to them to lay the proper foundation for future aid growth. That is the context for these decisions.
In an ideal world, funding would be increased exponentially but to paraphrase a recent quote from the Taoiseach, sometimes we must take one step back to take two steps forward. That is the sort of message we are trying to communicate. It is difficult to do this in an environment where our public finances are under the most severe pressure and we are finding things difficult.
I have a final question.
We are here to discuss hunger and we had that discussion in the Chamber recently.
When does the special envoy for hunger, Mr. Kevin Farrell, report back and what is the timetable for his work?
It is 18 months.
Will there be interim reports or will the Minister of State wait 18 months for him to come back with the report?
We will work with him on a continuing basis to tap into his knowledge. He is an internationally renowned expert who formerly worked with the World Food Programme in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. He is highly respected and has major international contacts, networking with the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome. We will work with him to garner his independent opinion on the initiatives we are taking and whether the reorientation of the programme is working. We do not claim to have any monopoly of wisdom, and we are open to ideas and to his advice on an ongoing basis. He will be working with us very closely on this.
I thank the Minister of State for attending, as well as Mr. Cotter and the officials. Is there any other business? With regard to the next meeting, there is the possibility of a meeting with the director of Dóchas to discuss the implications of the cut in the aid budget. Members will be advised of the date.