Mr. David Cooney:

The Deputy has made a couple of points to which I will respond. On the general point about aid, I am delighted that Deputy Donohoe visited Malawi. I only wish we had the facility in the programme to bring every Irish citizen out to see the work being done in the field. The aid programme says a lot about the people of this country. I am not responsible for setting the level of the aid programme which is a Government decision. However, I acknowledge that we have kept it at the current level. There is much to feel bad about over the past few years and quite a few things we might feel ashamed about but when we look back, this level of aid will be one of the things in which we can take great pride. Notwithstanding our own problems, we still find the time and money to help people who are less well-off than ourselves. This is part of the Irish tradition. When the country was a lot poorer, people still found the capacity to support our missionaries around the world who were working with people less well-off than themselves. I just wish we were in a position to show the Irish people not only what we are doing, but also to show them the abject conditions in which many of our fellow human beings live and the impact of even a small amount of help given to them.

I was in Malawi earlier this year to visit our aid programme which I regard as having a number of very inspiring and positive elements. Deputy Donohoe mentioned political misgovernance. Malawi has had a recurring problem with misgovernance. When I visited earlier this year, the previous president, Bingu wa Mutharika, was still in power. He was a man who did a lot of good things when he first became president but, as they say, power corrupts and this was certainly the case with him. He became very authoritarian and he was at total odds with the international donor community. He died during the course of the year and his successor as President is Joyce Banda. This is a very positive development from our point of view. She has worked with us and she has visited Ireland. We are hopeful that Malawi is on a better trajectory now. Clearly, issues of governance exist in underdeveloped societies. We need to remember that they existed in Europe when Europe was at a similar stage of development. Much of our work is to support governance in an effort to improve it.

In our view, we are entirely right to use local people in our programmes. We do not simply give them the programme and then throw away the keys. Our people are on the ground observing at macro level the developments in the country and the issues of governance. At governmental level we do not need the locals to tell us when things are not good. Perhaps at the micro level, if someone on the programme is skimming off at distribution level, then we rely on the people working at that level to inform us. That is a risk not only for governments, but for NGOs. We have experience of such occurrences in NGO programmes. When one employs and trusts local people, it is unfortunate that, human nature being what it is, that trust is not always rewarded. One must rely on the people one is working with. I have no doubt that employing and empowering people and bringing income to the local level is the way to go, but we have to be vigilant. That is the reason we keep our own people on the ground. The greater the risk, the more determined we are to have our people on the ground. This is the case in Karamoja in Uganda. We are the only donor with people on the ground watching how the programme is being run, watching how the outputs are being managed. It is all part of the risk that goes with operating in these areas but we have to help people to grow. This is what had to happen in Europe. When we look back from our relative comfort, we must remember that European society saw a lot more corruption and mismanagement in the past and we are still not immune from it.