MORE THAN 47 per cent of Irish respondents to a new Eurobarometer survey said they were prepared to spend more on groceries or other products from developing countries.

While 52 per cent said that tackling global poverty should be one of the Government’s main priorities.

Interviews

From over 1000 interviews in Ireland, 85 per cent of people said that it was important to help people from developing countries.

Ireland saw the highest increase in people who think that we should increase aid to developing countries beyond what is already promised at 13 per cent – up 6 percentage points since the 2012 survey. This is slightly above the EU average of 11 per cent.

A further 43 per cent of Irish respondents think that we should keep our promise to increase aid to developing countries, while 22 per cent – up 4 points from last year’s survey, think we should reduce aid to developing countries as we can no longer afford it.

The results show that people believe that every individual can play their part in tacking poverty and that it can have a positive influence on people:

Only 7 per cent of those surveyed said they were aware of the Millennium Development Goals:

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Read: Ireland has reduced the number of early school leavers, Eurostat finds>

Read: Ireland has the highest fertility rate in the European Union>

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