Ms Lorna Gold:

Following up on Deputy Smith's and Deputy O'Sullivan's comments on the question of untied aid, I agree with their view that the principle of untied aid is under threat, which is why we are seeking to reaffirm it and asking the Government to reaffirm its commitment to untied aid. As was highlighted in the recent Trócaire report, Where Aid Meets Trade: Ireland's role in the changing development landscape in Africa, which was launched together with AWEPA, the framework for international development and the framework for development assistance is shifting very much in favour of looking at where aid can benefit the donor country. This could be in different ways, be it through benefitting their own commercial trading interests with a particular country or as a benefit in respect of its foreign policy. Many governments have shifted in recent years towards this new framework. I am thinking in particular of the Australian Government which now states clearly that unless its aid is of benefit to its own national foreign policy interests, it will not be legitimate aid spending.

This is becoming the new norm within the development sector. As our report stated, the Irish Aid programme has maintained its untied aid status, but it is under threat from this new dominant way of thinking and the pressures to examine the efficiencies of Ireland's aid itself. For instance, are there possible win-wins for Irish business in its aid programme, particularly within the agricultural sector. This is the area that is put forward as a potential area for a win-win relationship. Certainly, win-wins are possible, but it is critical that the stated objective of overseas aid in the One World, One Future policy remains poverty eradication.

Ireland's standing internationally has been based on the principle of 100% untied aid and will continue to be based on this principle.

In the area of sustainable development, Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan raised concerns around the expansion of the sustainable development goals, SDGs, to cover 17 different goals and 167 targets, and Trócaire shares those concerns. The millennium development goals, MDGs, comprised eight clear-cut targets, and for all their flaws they represented what could be achieved in terms of a global agenda, but we now have a global agenda which is so large and so diverse that it is difficult to see how it can be applied. It is difficult to see what mechanisms could be put in place to achieve all the SDGs within a comprehensive framework. SDGs represent the whole gamut of public policies that need to be agreed by nationally accountable democratic governments. The fact that the SDGs have become so expansive puts the onus on the financing for development, FFD, process to deliver on the systemic drivers of poverty and injustice and on environmental sustainability. Issues of systemic injustice in the monetary, financial and tax system will enable individual governments to deliver on the SDGs as they are applicable to their own countries.