Mr. Jamie Drummond:

First, we should thank you for thanking us but then thank you back. Ireland has given generously for generations and there is a reason for that. I was in Dugort in County Mayo recently where things happened 150 years ago that no-one here wants to see repeated anywhere. However, those type of things are still happening. The Deputy is right that one would like to think that after 50 years of global aid programmes, those problems would have been ended but humanity is a restless thing. We keep moving on and creating new opportunities and challenges for ourselves and our brothers and sisters. Basically that is a good thing but rapid population growth, innovation, shifts in geopolitics and the form of globalisation that we are living with at the moment have created a new supply chain for certain products.

For example, the key ingredient in the material used to manufacture the mobile phone that has just interfered with the sound equipment - coltan - comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo which was mentioned by Deputy Seán Barrett. However, we seem to be unable to do anything about it because we are so dependent on the resource.

The funding for Ireland's aid programme must be increased again. I ask the committee to keep fighting for quality in the programme. I will come to some of the results it has delivered. I would be completely wrong if I were to say seeking an increase in funding is all the committee has to do. Ireland needs to increase its aid funding in order that it can speak about some of the other issues such as trade, investment and fighting corruption to ensure sensible international co-operation. Reaching 0.7% of GDP is the price the country will pay not only for saving lives with the money but also for being able to speak about some of the broader issues that will make the money go much further.

I have outlined some of the specific results in going from 0.3% to 0.7% of GDP and will happily supply the committee with them in written form. They run to the tens of millions once funding is leveraged through multilateral mechanisms such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations and the Global Partnership for Education. Deputy Seán Barrett asked for details in the areas of health and education. These are three such mechanisms and deliver great returns. Therefore, the committee can be incredibly confident that the money spent on these programmes will produce great returns and that they are also highly efficient because they have good inspector generals, budgeting processes, transparency and accountability levels throughout the system. When they identify corruption, it is revealed and made transparent. By the way, that often gets more headlines than when there is opacity in the system. It might be the case, therefore, that there is an appearance of more corruption precisely because we have campaigned for transparency to reveal what is in fact happening. An ironic by-product of the campaign for transparency is that sometimes it reveals the truth, which might be more corruption in some places than we would all like, but that is better than not knowing and allows us to identify the problem, go after it, solve it and reclaim the money and then reprogramme it when we have more confidence. The return on investment in such items as antimalarial bed nets, vaccines, antiretroviral drugs, TB dosages through direct observation therapy and the scaling up of nutrition programmes about very basic nutritional interventions, especially for infants for the first 1,000 days in the womb and early life, is spectacular and nowhere near maxed out. A lot more money could be spent in these areas to achieve far greater returns. We should, therefore, furnish members with the best possible responses to people who ask that question across the country in order that they could point to the results already achieved and what more could be done with the money and explain why it was not only the right thing to do morally but also in Ireland's strategic and economic long-term interests.