Since the start of September, staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Irish Aid, Ireland’s overseas aid development programme, have been working overtime.
Public events in Cork, Galway, Sligo, Limerick and Dublin, plus a call for written submissions, have occupied the collective ears of Irish Aid in a broad consultation process with the Irish public (and overseas) to discuss and review Ireland’s proposed new approach to overseas development work for the next five years.
Despite my best attempts to register for the public consultation event in Dublin yesterday, the 180-person capacity limit was reached at the Irish Emigration Museum. It’s interesting to observe that public listening and discussion exercises such as this are quite capable of drawing in the crowds. I imagine if another date was added to the listen exercise roster it may very well, once again,
A tour through the tweets sent out gives us a flavour of some of the pressing raised in public (we’ll have to wait for the consultations report for more detail).
The launch event for Irish Aid’s 2017 annual report ahead of the Dublin consultation brought a particular momentum to the night (we’ll be covering the annual report in another blog).
https://twitter.com/siobhanmcgee/status/1047177757480931328
https://twitter.com/Irish_Aid/status/1047182713499860992
https://twitter.com/ONEinIreland/status/1047217645760778241
https://twitter.com/Irish_Aid/status/1047194157062742016
https://twitter.com/LaRoisin/status/1047394058447060992
https://twitter.com/seamuspogorman/status/1047204745436450816
https://twitter.com/BobbyMc2014/status/1047210087851470849
https://twitter.com/lifelanddignity/status/1047373056283463680
https://twitter.com/GerryO_Connor/status/1047354061673181185
https://twitter.com/Reiseal2/status/1047199186087755776
https://twitter.com/LaRoisin/status/1047438616929157120
https://twitter.com/ONEinIreland/status/1047201557681459201
https://twitter.com/Reiseal2/status/1047180854986985479
https://twitter.com/tonygerman/status/1047234769749254144
- See Irish Aid’s 2017 annual report, published October 3, 2018 and check out details on the white paper review on the Irish Aid website and on twitter @Irish_Aid