The agreement was reached during Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai’s visit to Ireland on October 22-23.

During the two-day visit, Deputy PM Hai paid courtesy calls on President Mary McAleese and Prime Minister Brian Cowen and had separate meetings with Minister for Foreign Affairs Michéal Martin, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Barry Andrews, Central Bank Governor John Hurley and Minister for Trade and Commerce Billy Kellehe. He also attended the Vietnam-Ireland business forum, received leaders of several leading Irish economic groups and visited Dublin College and Trinity College.

At these talks and meetings, Irish leaders confirmed their priotised official development assistance (ODA) policy for Vietnam focusing on capacity building, administrative reform and climate change response.

Both host and guest noted with pleasure the positive development of multifaceted cooperation between the countries, especially in priotised areas of economics, trade, investment, development cooperation and training and education.

The two sides also agreed to boost bilateral education-training cooperation. Ireland said it would increase its number of scholarships for Vietnamese students and create favourable conditions for training and scientific research cooperation between Irish and Vietnamese universities.

They highlighted the cooperation and mutual support between the two countries at multi-parties forums, especially at the United Nations and the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two foreign ministries in which they will have regular meetings to exchange opinions in politics and diplomatic issues as well as issues of mutual concern.

Irish leaders affirmed their support to enhance Vietnam's comprehensive cooperation with the European Union (EU) while Vietnam supports Ireland in promoting its cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the context of Vietnam’s assumption of the bloc’s presidency next year.

They took the occasion to praise Vietnam's important renewal achievements recorded over the past 20 years of renewal in sustaining high economic growth rate, obtaining many UN Millennium Development Goals as well as coping with the global economic downturn.

On this occasion, Deputy PM Hai conveyed invitations of Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet and PM Nguyen Tan Dung to their Irish counterparts to visit Vietnam. Both President Mary McAleese and PM Brian Cowen accepted these invitations and the time of the visit will be arranged through diplomatic channel.