Ms Karen Jorgensen:

We had a good briefing from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on exactly what happened in Uganda and we appreciate the swiftness with which the Government attended to that. I agree with the Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that Ireland is putting in place the best possible structures for accountability that it can. When we go to Malawi, we will, of course, look at what they look like at country level. All our members can do is put in place good accountability structures, have good oversight of the programme and work with trusted partners but we cannot guarantee it will not happen again. What one can do is put in place the safeguards that are required.

It is worth mentioning that in the case of Uganda, much effort had been put in to building up the local structure - the government's own accountability structures - and it was through those structures that the fraud was detected. It shows that building up local capacity really makes a difference, that working with and through the country systems can help strengthen that and that it also contributes to better accountability at home for the donor agency.