Professor Patrick P. Walsh:

There was happiness with that metric then. Now, however, when GNI has started to boom, or boomerang back, what is happening is that even though funding has increased to about €600 million, the percentage figure in terms of the 0.7% target has fallen to about 0.3%. That is embarrassing for those concerned because it shows on the league table. In terms of an international perspective, the league table that matters is 0.7% of GNP. At one stage we were up close to 0.8% and former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made a commitment that we would get there before 2012.

I refer to the money aspect and somebody mentioned that it is increasing to €2.6 billion. When one becomes a €1 billion donor, one is in a different game. One has different partners. If one is a €2 billion donor, particularly with the sustainable development goals, SDGs, then maybe Siemens and other big companies, the big philanthropists and the big equity funds become involved. Then the challenge is not to become overly burdened with administration and accountability issues but to set up partnerships and to trust them and turn that €1 billion impact into a €1 trillion impact. That is what has to be done because a lot of these companies have good oversight, as do universities and other partners. If there is an idea that there has to be a manager of every €1 million of funding then that becomes bureaucratically very difficult. However, if the view is taken that this can be operated more like, say, the Ford Foundation or the Hewlett Packard Foundation and where we are able to take leadership and fund partnerships, particularly Irish partnerships, then a lot can be done.

There is no problem spending money. The levels and composition features need to be watched as this matters to the Department of Finance. In this regard reference was made to shifting the composition of the spread. The moral aspect to the 0.7% target is that if we have a major crisis then it is acceptable to reduce funding from, say, €800 million to €300 million because we needed the savings at home for domestic use. However, now that we have recovered from the financial crash we should increase the funding again. An analogy might be in respect of pay restoration for civil servants. That is why that metric is useful. It is what is called pro-cyclical. When one is poor one does not give but when one is rich one gives more. That was the whole motivation in the 1970s for people signing up to this metric. Does that answer the Senator's question?