Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to be associated with the remarks of my colleague, Deputy Eric Byrne, on the overall work that is being done through successive Administrations by foreign affairs officials, people on the ground and the wider Irish network of people involved. We all know its history, but it must be constantly restated.

The one area of vulnerability is the contributions to international organisations, D3. Just under €15 billion is an awful lot of money in any domestic Department. The political support we have so far succeeded in maintaining for that spend in times of cutbacks across the domestic programmes will not survive if we continue to allow corruption, manifest or not so manifest, as in Uganda and other situations. We are giving €4.6 million, a substantial sum of money, to the Palestinian Authority, which is notorious for its level of corruption. That money comes mostly from Arab donors, for whom it is only a few barrels of oil. I would like to hear what kind of sanctions the Minister has exercised. I am familiar with what happened when money went missing in Uganda. Has there been any follow-up on that? Can we have a forensic scrutiny of that spend?

It is not money that we have. It is money that we are borrowing and that our children and our children's children may have to repay. This is not cash that we are giving out through the generosity of our heart. We do not have it, we are borrowing it, and we are preventing other areas from getting the same amount of money. It is something I feel very strongly about, in addition to the positive comments of Deputies Smith and Eric Byrne.