Mr. Niall Burgess:

I will keep my responses very short and pass very quickly to Mr. de Búrca. Senator Daly mentioned the question of bilateral and multilateral funding, as well as the matter of control. It was mentioned by others as well. It is an issue. The figure for our total overseas development aid, ODA, channelled through multilateral organisations - the EU and United Nations, mostly - is approximately 40%. There has not been a reduction or diminution in our bilateral aid programmes, country programmes and strategic partnerships we developed.

On the question of control, we put many resources, effort and time into influencing our multilateral partners. We are very much across the governance of the European Development Fund, EDF, and Mr. de Búrca could speak to that a little more. It is quite a large part of the work of our permanent representation in Brussels. We work very closely with like-minded partners within the EU. People speak of alliance building within the European Union and we have built alliances with other partners in the European Union around the shaping of dispersals through the EDF. We put some effort into being on the governance bodies of some of our organisations, and we are on the governing body of the World Food Programme now and moving into the governing body of OCHA, the UN co-ordinator for humanitarian affairs. I could give other examples as well. We see that as a fundamental part of the work we do equal in importance to our management of our bilateral programmes.

On the matter of fraud, in 2016 suspected frauds amounted to just under 0.3% of the overall programme and approximately half that money was recovered. Although some of it is categorised as fraud, in reality in some cases we were deal with the likes of theft of stock from a warehouse, for example, where recovery would not be possible. As the pull towards humanitarian crises and working in what are essentially failed states increases, the risk of fraud increases as well. The efforts we must put into understanding those risks and mitigating them as best we can while accepting we can never completely exclude them is an increasing part of our work and the time we put into the aid programme at senior management level.

The only point I should make about Ireland's footprint overseas is that it is not just about missions, embassies and consulates. ODA is also a very important part of our footprint overseas and our diaspora and culture are also part of our overseas footprint. It is important to think about it in the round in those terms. In any discussion about footprint we would speak about development activities, including through multilateral organisations, as an important part of Ireland's footprint.

I might skip the Good Friday Agreement but Deputy Crowe mentioned the matter of control. I have dealt with that. The concept of selling Irish Aid to constituents was mentioned and I could not agree with the idea more. Mr. de Búrca mentioned we must continuously think about how we are communicating what we do. We believe we have a fantastic story to tell and Irish Aid is a great story but getting that out is something we must think about continuously. We feel we can always do more in that regard.

There were questions about Libya and the EU Africa trust fund. We are very heavily invested in the discussions at EU level both on assistance and support in Libya and the associated political dimensions but our bilateral reach is limited. We are accredited to Libya from our embassy in Rome. There are some cases where one must say we simply operating at a distance. That is the case even in terms of the humanitarian assistance for the crisis around the wider Middle East. We are accredited to Lebanon and Jordan from our embassy in Cairo, which has a very heavy workload on its hands. Getting back to the point about control, we have been placing development and humanitarian specialists in embassies close to these humanitarian crises. For example, we have put a humanitarian specialist into our embassy at Ankara whose brief is to engage full-time with the agencies dealing with that crisis.

We have dealt with the matter of communication. There was mention of the target of 0.7% of gross national income, GNI, and there are large Government policy decisions at stake in this regard. If we were to reach 0.7% of GNI by 2030, our overall aid programme, on current projected growth rates, would be approximately €2.5 billion. That would require an increase of approximately €150 million per year between now and then. That is the scale we are looking at with a growing economy. What we consider as we project growth are matters of oversight, good governance and control around the aid programme. In terms of the recent trajectory of funding, our assistance has been growing, albeit at modest levels. A great deal of the work we have put into Irish Aid over the past number of years has been around managing its reduction, although it was a modest enough reduction. It was also about considering matters of efficiency as we reduced as well, so as to ensure impact would have been maximised even in years when the funding was reduced.

There was a question about measurable results and short-term versus long-term goals. Mr. de Búrca has been dealing with this very closely in the field. As I am conscious of the time I will hand over some of the matters to him now.