President Michael D Higgins will address the opening session of the World Food Forum in Rome, at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.
Today marks World Food Day, which is observed to underline the challenges of food insecurity and hunger.
President Higgins is expected to emphasise that in responding to the challenge of food security, we must move past reactive emergency responses, and instead tackle the underlying structural causes of hunger. The President will also suggest that we must recognise the links between food insecurity, global poverty, migration, debt and climate change.
Later this week, he will meet the Italian President Sergio Mattarella and he will have a private audience with Pope Francis, He will also lay a wreath to honour the late Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, who saved thousands of Jews in World War II.