A good Plan: 1. Blathnaid Ni Chofaigh & Salil Shetty; 2. Colin Murphy; 3. Eamonn Casey & Joanna Rea. (Pix. Shane O’Neill / Fennells)
The Director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign, Salil Shetty, paid a whirlwind visit to Dublin recently where he met with a number of groups including Irish Aid and the Joint Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mr. Shetty was the special guest at an event at The Westin, organised by the children’s development charity Plan Ireland, which aimed to widen the debate about issues facing children, particularly girls, in the developing world.
Among the guests at the event were Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan TD, David Dalton, CEO of Plan Ireland and Blathnaid Ni Chofaigh, who is an Ambassador for Children for the charity. Also present were H.E. The Indian Ambassador P.S. Raghavan, comedian and TV presenter Colin Murphy, Rodney Rice and Lord Mayor of Dublin Emer Costello.
“I urge the government to preserve the aid budget and to commit to achieving the 0.7% target by 2015. If Ireland could achieve this we’d place the Irish nation, once again, to the fore of international development cooperation,” said David Dalton.
Currently, Ireland is the seventh most generous donor per capita in the world, though our generosity has faltered somewhat in recent years. In order to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals it is vital to maintain our aid contributions and to deliver on the international target of 0.7% of gross national income. We have failed, twice, to meet this target.
Commenting on this Minister Lenihan stated: “We are still a wealthy country”, he said, “and we have a moral obligation to help those who are much less fortunate.”
