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

As our colleague, Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan, said, we were in northern Mozambique and Malawi recently where the work of Irish Aid and Irish missionaries was very impressive. Unfortunately, there is now only a small number of Irish missionaries there, but the work of Irish Aid in funding particular programmes and the work of individual members of Irish NGOs was very impressive. We met people from different countries. I always recall the phrase used by the EU ambassador to Malawi when he spoke to us. He said the footprint of Irish ODA was very impressive.

He was speaking about projects in Malawi that Irish Aid is funding.

The statistics in Mr. Drummond's presentation are startling. As Senator Bacik noted, it is very concise and comprehensive. This is the type of message that we need to get out to people living here. I never hear people cribbing about the Exchequer money that goes to Irish Aid, regardless of the challenges and the many competing demands for public expenditure. There is a great appreciation of the needs of people in those countries who live in awful circumstances. In communities where someone is working as a missionary or as a lay person, there are often fundraisers when they are home, and when there are crises, Irish people rise to the challenge and contribute handsomely to different disaster aid fundraisers. Nevertheless, as members of this committee have discussed informally among ourselves, we need to get a clearer message across to Irish taxpayers about the effectiveness of such funds and the good use to which they are put. I do not know how this can be done. Does Mr. Drummond have any particular suggestions on how the message of the scale of need in these developing countries can be conveyed, as well as our particular role in addressing the horrific challenges that exist?