Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

Deputy Ó Murchú alluded to some of the sustainable development goals. There are 17 of them and they are aspirational in nature, although the view is that rather than concentrating on words we need action in relation to them. The Minister of State is in a lucky position in that he is saying €840 million of Irish taxpayers' money is going into projects right across Africa and the world. There is huge support within the Oireachtas for that. I will focus on the importance of proper scrutiny of every euro and every cent that is spent in relation to those goals.

How important does the Minister of State think it is for Oireachtas Members, for instance, to see for themselves the work that many of the projects are doing on the ground? I previously talked about travelling to Tanzania a number of years ago. The Minister of State mentioned Dar es Salaam. One of the things people were trying to do there was train the trainers, which the port authorities there were looking to do with Dublin Port. That was an example of practical help that could be done that is untied. A question was asked as regards what is in this for Ireland. There is trade, goodwill and all those other positive things.

On the issue of getting value for every cent that is spent, we have been lucky in the sense that there have not been the scandals in relation to money going into such and such a Minister's account or whatever. At the time I was in Tanzania, there was a scandal where, coincidentally, money had supposedly gone into someone's account. That was the big news at the time, but we saw other things. There was one project where the cattle herd was being enhanced. That had stopped and local people did not know why. It stopped because the Irish Government had invested in this project for about 20 years and the next level was that the Tanzanian Government was supposed to step in and follow through on the project, but that did not happen. The only thing people knew was there was a project and it just stopped. How important is the follow-up in relation to a lot of these projects?

I will give just one more example that was again to do with basket funding. There was an area where there was sisal, from which ropes are made, which is seen across Africa, traditionally. Africans are starting to use it again rather than plastic. In this area, a sunflower factory was supposed to be open. We went to visit the sunflower factory. The machinery and the factory were there but no sunflowers were growing around the factory. There were no sunflowers growing in that region. There was no electricity for the factory. Something went wrong there, but my worry at the time was that this is someone ticking a box. There was a factory and machinery and everything else. The next thing the locals wanted was the electricity in the area, which would have enhanced the whole area. The point I am making is that was not sustainable in the long term. It is a bad example to give because there were so many positive things I can talk about regarding that trip, including the stuff around using less water for growing more rice. That was one of the things, as was help for women who had a fistula and the whole thing of how they were treated and so on.

People have visited many of these things, but I am just picking the one that went wrong. In the days we live in, of false news, fake news and so on, that could be amplified in relation to where our money is going and where the wasted money is going and so on. How important is it we have that oversight role as elected representatives to follow up that huge amount of investment that is there? We need to do that follow-up as Oireachtas Members, with whatever support we have, right across the Oireachtas, for all parties and none. There has been that tradition in this House. It is critical we get it right in relation to that. As an Oireachtas, we need to spend more time on funnelling down on how these projects work, and whether or not they work. I have talked for too long. I apologise, but it is a fair question to ask the Minister of State. He is responsible for all that money on behalf of Irish taxpayers.

It is important we get this right.