Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In the past few weeks we have had several meetings to review the level of Irish aid. Some of the stakeholders we have met have expressed concern about the rising allocations of ODA to the multilateral organisations and, similarly, the climbing amounts being spent bilaterally and the resourcing of NGOs. Does Mr. Drummond have a view on this issue? Does he have concerns about the effectiveness of the oversight mechanisms in place within multilateral organisations? Furthermore, I do not know how familiar he is with the fact that Ireland has a number of partner countries with which we have a particular focus. Does he think we should have a broader range of partner countries with which to have particular programmes?