Shay Brennan endorses focused international aid and rights

Your clear enthusiasm before this committee, that's very welcome. I just want to note, I mean, it's obvious we're a small country. We have limited resources, but we do attach a very significant importance to helping those less fortunate, and I do believe that this sends a strong message to other larger countries with deeper pockets that they too have moral obligations to humanity. And finally, I applaud your focused deployment of aid, particularly, for example, towards the preeclampsia situation in Mozambique, you know, clearly you can point to that having saved 5,000 lives in a year, and that is very focused aid that we can see direct outcomes from. And finally, I understand your hectic schedule, and I do applaud your willingness to travel and see and understand firsthand how Irish aid is being applied. Thank you. No, thank you very much, Chair, for the opportunity and the level of engagement. And as I said from the outset, this should be a committee where there's great space for cross-party agreement, and we can really embrace a collective drive, and I certainly sense that this afternoon. I'd like to just address a couple of the points that were raised in the second round, and some of them are a bit more general, but I think, Deputy Brennan, you addressed, you raised one very clear issue, and it's related to Senator Higgins's point in relation to negative propaganda. The issues that the vast majority of us have been facing in our constituency over the last year or two that have caused real concern for our constituents in terms of rising food prices, rising energy prices, and the changing patterns in migration. They all stem from global insecurity, and how do you address global insecurity in the most efficient way? It is at source. It's by making sure that you give people in the global south and developing world the best opportunities. The best opportunities to simply live healthy lives, to make sure that they get an education, to make sure that there is economic opportunities, to make sure that there is equality of opportunity, and to make sure that there is safety from violence, and be it through conflict, or indeed through societal. So that is why international development, to your point, Senator Higgins, is so important, and why we all have to be prepared, as right-thinking people, to take on very lazy narratives that I thought I only heard on social media and on the internet, but very sadly, I have heard twice now at EU foreign affairs councils delivered by ministers from other member state government, which is extremely worrying. It gets to the point, Senator Stevenson, in relation to EU trade agreements and the very differing interests of member states, and it is very clear in the EU-Israel Association agreement that Ireland has a distinctly different opinion than certain member states. That does not mean, for any instance, we should stop our level of advocacy, or stop our approach to it, but it does mean that when we look at future trade agreements, that we make sure that those human rights clauses, they can be as watertight as you want, but you have to get the political buy-in from member states. I certainly think, if we look at other trade agreements that are in the ether, they are certainly far more advanced than I would have with Senator O'Loughlin worked on the Committee of the the Region's Trade for All report over a decade ago. To your point, Senator Higgins, in relation to financing for development, and this kind of goes to all the points raised, those meetings in Seville will take place in late June, early July. They are not in isolation. We obviously have the ongoing EU development ministers meetings, both formal and informal. That will lead to the meeting of development ministers at the G20 in South Africa in late July, where Ireland is an invited guest thanks to our South African friends. It will also lead to the UN General Assembly, when there will be a specific day relating to development issues in late September, followed by the next round of COP in Belém in Brazil, where there is a specific day related to development in addressing climate change, and also the 7th EU-Africa Union Summit, which is due to take place in Africa by the end of the year. I would have attended a meeting of European and African ministers last week in Brussels. This is the sort of timeline in the very near future where all the issues raised in this discussion have an opportunity to be raised for us to reach agreement and for us to sell the very clear message of the importance of this. And you rightly and others rightly talk about the work of aid agencies, of smaller local-led organisations. You talk about making sure that they are rights-based, I think about the work of frontline defenders who are based in Black Rock but are very impactful in the developing world, but equally when myself and Director General Gaffey would have met with human rights defenders in Liberia in relation to potential draft anti-LGBTI legislation coming into the Liberian Parliament, that is the real substantial work that is going and is right to do. You mentioned IDEA, Senator Higgins, I look forward to addressing their meeting tomorrow in Malahide, which I think you knew about, as well as the Global Education Awards in Dublin Castle on Friday, where we will be able to talk about the young primary school students and their teachers and principals. People like you, Deputy O'Sullivan, who have the opportunity in the classroom. You have a different role at the moment to make sure that we impart this value system into the next generation in what is an increasingly difficult and, to be quite frank, scary global situation that we face into. But now is the time for Ireland to seize the opportunity and the challenge and to be outspoken in our value system and, more importantly, to put our money where our mouth is. Thank you.