Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 19 May 2004
26 Mr. Morgan asked the Minister for Foreign Affairs if all increases in Irish and EU ODA will be exclusively poverty focused and not connected to broadened OECD/DAC criteria on counter-terrorism clauses. [14610/04]
View answerThe Government's development co-operation programme has a strong focus on poverty reduction in the poorest developing countries and this will remain our approach.
As regards EU development assistance, Article 177 of the European Union Consolidated Treaties states, inter alia, that Community policy in the sphere of development co-operation, which shall be complementary to the policies pursued by member states, shall foster “the campaign against poverty in the developing countries”. Thus, poverty reduction is already anchored in the existing treaties. Last year, I joined six of my ministerial colleagues in an initiative, which secured the insertion in the text of the draft EU constitutional treaty of a reference to poverty reduction as the objective of EU development co-operation. As EU Presidency, Ireland has worked hard to strengthen the poverty reduction objective of the EU’s development policy.
The annual high level meeting of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, DAC, on 15 and 16 April last debated the relationship between security and development. While participants accepted that the DAC's ODA criteria should include, for example, activities designed to promote peace and stability through the creation of more accountable security forces or the reinforcement of a human rights culture in developing countries, there was general agreement that the traditional definition of ODA should be carefully protected in this debate and that the current criteria should not be broadened, apart from three minor clarifications of existing provisions.
