Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Foreign Affairs supports education within our overall development strategy and supports young people's engagement with science. This includes support for Masters programmes for students from developing countries and for second level students participating in young scientist programmes and in the BT Young Scientist Programme in Ireland. The Department also supports science-based research partnerships with institutional partners.

For the past eighteen years, the Department and the development NGO, Self-help Africa have organised the Science for Development Award at he Young Scientist Exhibition in Dublin. We provided €26,000 in 2023.

We collaborate with the BT Young Scientist Exhibition through programmes established by our Embassies in Kenya and Jordan. We provided €170,000 in Kenya in 2023 for the programme, which reaches over 200,000 students in 700 schools, including more than 15 special needs schools. The Jordan Young Scientists programme, which is still developing, engaged 638 students from 121 schools in 2023, 60% of whom were female. We provided €36,500 for the programme in 2023.

The Department of Foreign Affairs also supports science capacity building through the Ireland Fellows Programme, our development scholarship programme. In 2023, we provided some €3.8 million so that 102 fellows from developing countries could undertake Masters of Science programmes in Ireland.

We provided €228,166 to the Irish Research Council for research under the Collaborative Alliances for Societal Challenges programme which provides opportunities for new collaborations between researchers in Ireland and researchers in developing countries.

In addition, Science Foundation Ireland received €1,000,000 for the SFI-DFA Sustainable Development Goals challenge. This supports interdisciplinary research on the implementation of the SDGs with a focus on SDG 2 (Zero Hunger, with a specific emphasis on food systems). A grant of €500,000 was also made to the Marine Institute for the Our Shared Ocean Programme which develops capacity and supports research in partner countries, particularly Small Island Developing States, on marine issues.

The Trinity Impact Evaluation Unit received €40,000 to provide scholarships for participants from Irish Aid partner countries to attend an online impact evaluation course, aimed at building capacity in development economics in developing countries.

We also work in partnership with the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, a global research partnership, with a grant last year of €5.8 million. This was focused on investment in technological and institutional innovations, partnerships, capacity development, and policy engagement on the creation of sustainable and resilient food, land, and water systems.