Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

As unearmarked and softly earmarked funding are generally applied by partner organisations to large programmes already in operation, it is often not possible to directly attribute results, for example, beneficiary numbers or specific outcomes, to the Irish Aid contribution.

For earmarked funding, the Department is in a position to exercise more control at project implementation stage and it is easier to evaluate whether expected project outcomes are actually being achieved. In such cases, the Department reserves the right to carry out an audit of original documentation in support of grant requests, held at the offices of the implementing partner. The Department has procedures in place for monitoring financial statements submitted by partner organisations. However, audits in funded agencies are only conducted in circumstances where this analysis of financial statements highlights problems or there are other indicators of concern. As a result, no such audits have taken place in Jordan and none were carried out in respect of any projects during 2018. I recommended that the Department should undertake a limited number of planned audits each year, to verify information reported by selected humanitarian assistance partners in receipt of earmarked funding and to check original documentation supporting financial returns received.

Overall, we found that the Department has a comprehensive control framework with regard to the provision of humanitarian assistance and that that framework had been relatively effectively applied in relation to the specific projects sampled.