Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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We have a quorum and shall commence in public session. Apologies have been received from Senator David Norris who is unable to join us. As the meeting is being broadcast live on television I ask people for their co-operation regarding their mobile telephones because they interfere with the recording equipment in the committee room, even on silent mode. I ask the people in the Visitors Gallery to ensure that their mobile telephones are switched off for the duration of the meeting as they cause interference. As today's meeting is being broadcast live on the Oireachtas channel I would appreciate if everybody would switch off their mobile telephones.

Usually the first item on the agenda is the minutes of the previous meeting but today I shall deal with them after we meet the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. I welcome all of the delegation. We normally do not meet until Wednesday afternoon so members have travelled here on a Tuesday morning especially to meet the delegation and hear about this important review that takes place every four years. I am delighted to see an all-woman forum in attendance. It is not too often that we see one and we are delighted to have the delegation.

We are all aware of the work done by Irish Aid which is primarily aimed at reducing poverty and hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. We are rightly proud of the efforts of Irish Aid and also the work of the development assistance committee of the OECD.

It enables the effectiveness of our aid programme to be measured. The next DAC peer review is due to be published in October. Today's meeting is a timely opportunity for an exchange of views with members of the committee, which will be very useful. The format of today's meeting will be a presentation by the Development Assistance Committee, followed by questions from the members.

I welcome Ms Karen Jorgensen and Ms Ida McDonnell from the OECD, Ms Maria Paula Marques Faria de Barro and Ms Ana Paula Lopes Fernandes from Portugal and Ms Eglé Blozniené from Lithuania. I know they are receiving good co-operation from our officials in Irish Aid. As I said, we have a very good aid programme, of which we are very proud. The committee travels abroad to visit some of the programme countries and we have seen at first hand the excellent work done by Irish Aid and our NGOs, of which we are very proud. I call on Ms Jorgensen, head of the review and evaluation division, to make her presentation.

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

I thank the Chairman for the warm welcome. It is a pleasure to be here today. By way of giving members a little bit of background to the reviews, they may know the OECD conducts country reviews in a wide range of policy areas. The organisation and its Development Assistance Committee place high priority on the reviews we do in the area of development co-operation. The committee has 29 members and two of the members always review a third country. This time Ireland is being reviewed by Austria and Portugal, and the representatives of Portugal are here today. When we review the aid programme, we look at all aspects of how Ireland conducts its development co-operation. We also look forward to issuing some recommendations for consideration by the Government about how it might improve its performance in the aid programme.

We have two main objectives. The first objective is accountability, namely, to hold the Government to account for international commitments undertaken and also for the commitments it set out in its own domestic policy. The second objective is to foster mutual learning because we believe there is great value in members learning from each other. We certainly believe Ireland has a good programme with much of the thinking behind it, from which other members could benefit.

We consult a broad range of stakeholders in conducting the review. We talk not only to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which is the main partner, but also to other Departments, partner countries, civil society, opinion leaders and, very importantly, Members of Parliament who vote on the budgets and on the policy direction and, to a large extent, who steer the programme politically. We would really welcome hearing from them how they see the programme being implemented.

We will spend one week in Dublin and one week in Malawi where we will also meet a wide range of stakeholders, including members of Malawi's parliament. It will culminate with a meeting in Paris in October where the Development Assistance Committee will discuss the report we put forward as the team.

We are really grateful for the opportunity to hear members' views on the work of the Irish Aid programme and we hope we can have a lively engagement with them. I thank the committee for accommodating our meeting.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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There was much upset in Ireland two years ago when there was some misappropriation of funding in Uganda. We thought it would change the mindset of the public who make a great contribution to aid, in particular for countries in need. The response of the Irish Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was swift and we were able to get that funding back. Does Ms Jorgensen think that could happen again in other programme countries? Was there some reason for selecting Malawi? Was it a random choice?

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

The way we select partner countries is that we ask the country under review to offer up three suggestions of countries it would propose we visit. Generally, it tries to select programme countries which are broad based and will give us a good view of the breadth and depth of the programme it runs. We look at the three options and at where we believe we will get the most and the best information about the programme. We will also look to see which countries we have recently visited in the context of other reviews, so that we do not go back to the same countries time and again. We were actually quite happy for Malawi to be suggested because it is a relatively new programme country for Ireland. We have not visited Malawi in the context of a peer review, so from that point of view, we thought it would be a very interesting case to examine.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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What about Uganda?

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

We had a good briefing from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on exactly what happened in Uganda and we appreciate the swiftness with which the Government attended to that. I agree with the Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that Ireland is putting in place the best possible structures for accountability that it can. When we go to Malawi, we will, of course, look at what they look like at country level. All our members can do is put in place good accountability structures, have good oversight of the programme and work with trusted partners but we cannot guarantee it will not happen again. What one can do is put in place the safeguards that are required.

It is worth mentioning that in the case of Uganda, much effort had been put in to building up the local structure - the government's own accountability structures - and it was through those structures that the fraud was detected. It shows that building up local capacity really makes a difference, that working with and through the country systems can help strengthen that and that it also contributes to better accountability at home for the donor agency.

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the delegation, which is carrying out important work. The Chairman referred to the need for public support for the programme. In challenging economic times, this country continues to provide a very substantial aid programme. The taxpayers and the public at large need to know that money is being put to good use. Syria is the humanitarian crisis of this generation and it was most disappointing that the international community failed to make sufficient pledges at the recent humanitarian pledging conference. One of the issues mentioned to us all the time is that where humanitarian assistance is sought in times of crisis, it often does not get to the people most in need. Maybe that is not directly under the delegation's remit but it is an issue which should always be at the forefront of our minds, that is, that humanitarian assistance gets to the people most in need.

Is there any country whose aid programme appears to deliver better results than those of other countries? Directly funded programmes and assistance provided by NGOs are of critical importance. Our NGOs meet us regularly and we are very proud of the work they do in so many stricken areas. Internationally, is there enough accountability in regard to NGOs?

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

I will address the issue of comparability and who performs really well among the donors. That is a question they are all keen to understand because there is a certain amount of competition in terms of who is the best donor.

Not everyone is brilliant at everything and some donors are better at some things than others. That is where the mutual learning aspect comes in. The members of our committee are keen to learn from each other about how they can improve their systems.

Ireland is a small and very tight programme with a lot of room for thinking and innovating and, in that sense, it has a lot to offer other donors. Others we have reviewed recently such as Denmark have a system somewhat like the Irish in that it is integrated with its aid programme in foreign affairs and it has long experience of how to do integrated foreign affairs policy with development and it is doing very well in that respect. Other than that, we do not rank our members. There is not yet a scoring system; we might get there some day.

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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Does the EU take the best of the practices of member states and convert them into a policy in its programmes?

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

I could not honestly answer that because it has been some time since we reviewed the EU. It is important that all the members participate actively in setting the policy for the Union as a whole through the development committee. I will ask Ms Lopes Fernandes and Ms Faria de Barro to comment because they are from member states that participate in the EU's programme.

Ms Ana Paula Lopes Fernandes:

Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here and to be part of this peer review. The EU is a member of the committee like its member states so when we deal with the standards and the policy discussions in the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, we do it as individual members. We have good brainstorming sessions and discussions on setting the standards and the recommendations we would like to see in how donors are performing. We do not have a EU specific approach in the committee because the EU is a member like all its member states such as Ireland and Portugal. That is also positive in terms of the brainstorming and the work we are doing in that committee.

In terms of the EU Presidency and the leadership role taken by Ireland, we were pleased to see that many development issues were put on the agenda and we are supportive of the approach to those issues and Ireland's approach during the EU Presidency. We were happy with the way it was managed and the way some of the issues were put on the agenda again and with the conclusions we had on the Council post-2015 and linking development aid with sustainable development. Ireland did a good job during its Presidency in the development area.

Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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The delegation is more than welcome. I am familiar with the committee's oversight role. My understanding is Portugal and Austria are the two partners that will review Ireland's overseas development aid programme and Malawi is being taken as the counter country. How were Austria and Portugal chosen? What is the relationship between these countries? Are OECD staff in those countries? What is the relationship within them vis-á-visthe other team that will accompany these staff for two weeks in Malawi? I would like to clarify this organisational question.
Reference was made to the importance of this committee. We sanction the ODA budget and, unfortunately, we also cut it on occasions. It has reduced from 0.7% of GDP to less than 0.5%. However, there are historical and economic reasons for that.
Has the OECD a vision of how to best use development aid? We pride ourselves in Ireland on being a small country doing a good job but we do not have oversight of projects that are being funded, which we think are great. When Ireland and its work in Malawi is compared to that of other OECD members, how are conclusions drawn in the context of the organisation's vision about the success or failure of our programme?
Uganda is a great example of where the Government stepped in quickly when it discovered fraud by the prime minister's office amounting to €3 million. We also pride ourselves that the fraud was exposed by virtue of the fact that Irish Aid had been assisting a department within the office. That is a great example of how aid is effective because ultimately €9 million was saved with two other affected donor countries also providing €3 million each. Aside from the traditional provision of aid for natural disasters, hunger and so on, has the OECD a vision as to how aid should best be distributed or implemented? Rather than feeding the hungry at the side of the road as part of a charitable, aid assisted programme of the government, investment should be made in infrastructure. If there is massive corruption in countries, ODA will dissipate. Should the corruption not be tackled? Should governments be assisted at local and national level where they are weak? Many of these countries are emerging from wars or other friction. If hunger is the perennial problem, should aid be provided for food production methods, education and water treatment to reduce the need for aid for those who repeatedly fall sick from dysentery and so on?
The UN is preparing its post-2015 vision for development aid. Has the OECD a vision and does the organisation want us to conform to that?

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the delegation for attending. I am surprised there is not a ranking. Why not? Do some OECD members not want it because they might be embarrassed by it? In business, as in any organisation, if it is not being measured, it is not being done. Perhaps the OECD will consider this point.

According to the delegation's analysis, some countries give aid that is tied to their trade policy. In other words, they will give aid if the recipient country buys its products. That is trade rather than aid. Is that taken into account in reviews?

In the context of aid, for every dollar that is given to developing countries by the EU and others, it is estimated they lose three dollars because of the trade policies of First World countries. Has analysis been conducted on how that affects development? I refer to EU trade policy, although this is not within the delegation's remit. When developing such a policy with Colombia, a human rights clause was inserted but there is no trigger mechanism. Nobody has ever explained to us how that would happen.

Ireland's ODA contribution has reduced because of our economic circumstances but we are tied to giving 0.7% of funding to various EU initiatives.

No matter what the EU initiative is we must give 0.7% of it. The amount of money available for our bilateral aid programme and for our NGOs such as Concern, Trócaire, GOAL and others under Dóchas, and many other organisations, is dropping substantially because we are tied to giving 0.7% to all these EU programmes. We must give hundreds of millions of euro over five years for particular programmes. What is the witnesses' view of that? We give a very large headline figure which reduces the amount we have as a country in discretionary allocation to bilateral aid programmes and to our NGOs, which badly need them.

When people consider our aid programme they consider the work done by our NGOs, our work in Malawi and other partner countries but that accounts for only a small proportion of our money. Most of our money is committed to the EU. We have no control over what happens to it after it leaves our coffers. Ironically, we borrow most of that money from the EU in the first place. I would like to get the witnesses’ views on those issues. I am sorry that I cannot stay to hear the answers but I will be able to read them in the Official Report.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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There are several questions from two members, Deputy Eric Byrne and Senator Daly.

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

I will address the organisational issues that Deputy Byrne raised. As a member of the committee a country is obliged to undergo peer reviews roughly every five years. It is also obliged to serve as an examiner of another country, roughly every two years. Every year I know which countries are due for a review. I schedule them in and consider which countries are due to be examiners and try to match up members that can serve as good and appropriate examiners of the country to be examined. That was not very eloquent but I hope the committee gets the point. In this case Austria and Portugal were on the list of countries to be examiners this year and we felt that they had programmes of a similar size to Ireland’s, that they were engaging in similar topics, had similar interests and could learn a lot from each other. That was my rationale for suggesting to the committee that Austria and Portugal examine Ireland, and that was accepted.

Another question was how we define best practice. Some committee members have the reference guide for peer or country reviews which sets out seven dimensions of performance against which we think we should measure the member. While it does not attach numerical or quantitative values that would allow a more specific ranking there is in fact an implicit ranking because we have indicators. We started to apply this a year ago. It gives us a better comparator between our members because we now review them against the same set of indicators.

In answer to the question about how we judge delivery of aid in countries, first, our point of departure in examining a country is the commitments that it has made. The basis for our review of Ireland is the 2006 White Paper, supplemented by the more recent One World, One Future because they are the policy instruments that set out what Ireland would like to see being achieved. It is very important that countries work in areas where they feel they have a comparative advantage, where they can add something specifically to the development of their partner countries, that they focus on countries where they have a presence, where they understand the context very well, where they have established good partnerships because all of those factors will be key to successful delivery of an aid programme.

I will leave my answer there and turn to the representatives of Portugal to answer the more specific questions related also to the EU.

Ms Ana Paula Lopes Fernandes:

I thank members for their questions. I hope we will have time to hear their views on certain topics because that is also part of our objective at this meeting.

Ireland peer-reviewed us in 2009. We were very pleased with the team and had the opportunity to exchange some ideas. We are now very pleased to be on this side of the table. This is an exercise in peer learning and discussion about challenges and opportunities and how we do things. It is not just an exercise in criticism. It is an exercise in being critical, helpful, very respectful and understanding the policy environment in each country. That is our attitude as examiners. The committee is a peer-learning committee. It is not a ranking committee. That is not the spirit of the committee. For example, we do not have a programme of development co-operation for Portugal in Malawi but I happen to know the country very well. Each of us on the team has a particular expertise in certain areas that could be helpful for the team in addressing the topics that we must address.

It is very difficult to compare what different donors do because they do not all work in the same countries or have the same objectives. Some focus on least-developed countries, LDCs, others on middle-income countries, some are grant-oriented where others are loan or concession-oriented. It is very difficult to have a ranking for performance indicators like a business indicator system.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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If some countries say they will help with education, that could be measured by the number of teachers they helped to become educators or how many children finished primary level. If a country focuses on education and works in Botswana and manages, as Irish Aid has done, to ensure that 85% get out-----

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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The Senator should let Ms Fernandes answer the question.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I am just saying that it is not a question of how a country gives the money but of what it does and its effectiveness.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Thank you.

Ms Ana Paula Lopes Fernandes:

I was talking specifically about the idea of having a ranking based on that and not on the results. In the peer review we must also assess the results. I was saying that if there are only two countries working, for instance, on Guinea-Bissau how can one rank them vis-à-viscountries such as Mozambique where 19 countries work. It is a completely different setting if one is working on fragility or on a country that has a different consistency for development, even in education. For ranking purposes, one is interested in the support for the millennium development goals, MDGs. That involves targets. We work more on targets and whether the country is performing vis-à-visthose targets. We have commitments on tying. Are we performing on the commitments that we have agreed on tying? There is a ranking there. We have commitments on LDCs, for example, how much of our aid should go to LDCs vis-à-visthe total amount of aid. Are we performing there and where are we ranking there? We have particular rankings for particular international agreements to which we have subscribed as a community of donors, as governments, broadly speaking. When we make these commitments we have rankings. There is data from the OECD that can be assessed because it is public and transparent. The OECD is very clear on that type of recommendation. It might be difficult to have a ranking based on the general performance of the donor.
We have commitments and rankings on tying and many recommendations. That is part of what we assess also in peer reviews. We consider the overall importance that the government gives to human rights, in cross-cutting issues in its development policies.

On the question about the way we are or are not following statistics, I happen to also be the facilitator of the working party on statistics, which is the body in the Development Assistance Committee, DAC, that is responsible for managing statistics. We have rules that were agreed between the European countries and the EU to avoid double counting. We do not have double counting in statistics in terms of reporting what each donor is doing under the EU framework and what that donor is doing as an individual, bilateral donor. The contributions for the EU are also assessed against these principles and recommendations, as I said, so they are part of the whole picture, as the EU, and then we, as the EU governments, have agreements with them. When we discuss the revision of the European Development Fund, for example, we may say what we would like the European Development Fund to do.

We can always improve the accountability system but I believe that is a discussion we will probably have to have in Brussels, among the EU members. It does not really relate to the purpose of the discussions we have in the Development Assistance Committee, where we also have other members like the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. We are going a little beyond the European constituency there in that we have five more members joining this year and we also have an outreach strategy that includes Mexico, Chile and Turkey, as OECD members. Therefore, we are going a little beyond Europe and the EU is just a part of that. However, we are very careful to avoid double counting and to assess different issues in terms of the overall development statistics. I hope I have answered the questions.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I thank Ms Lopes Fernandes. To follow up on a question from Deputy Byrne on parliamentary accountability, the witnesses said that when the Development Assistance Committee members go to Malawi, they will be meeting parliamentarians. One of the issues raised in Busan was the fact that aid programmes seem to work through governments rather than through parliaments. Do the witnesses believe, from their visits to other parliaments throughout sub-Saharan Africa, that parliaments have a role in regard to funding and accountability?

Before the witnesses respond to that question, I call Deputy Mitchell.

Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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That is a very good question and I would like to hear the answer. In Malawi, we were quite surprised because, even though we work in partnership with the Government, those parliamentarians I spoke to knew nothing of Irish Aid, so they certainly were not following Irish Aid or in any way assessing its effectiveness.

I have a question that follows on from Deputy Byrne's question on best practice. It probably comes under the Development Assistance Committee's heading of "Delivery Modalities and Partnerships help deliver Quality Aid". When the witnesses go to Malawi, they will see that Irish aid is delivered through NGOs primarily, with supervision. A number of Irish NGOs are being funded and possibly some international NGOs also. On the face of it, one would think this is duplication of effort but, in fact, they are all dealing with different aspects of what is our really excellent programme there - in my view, it is a very impressive food nutrition programme. It seems there is potential for drawing on the different expertise of the different NGOs but also for automatic peer review and peer learning. From the perspective of the Development Assistance Committee, is there an international best practice model of how aid should be delivered in that way through NGOs or through a multiplicity of NGOs? Perhaps it is a difficult question.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Thank you. The questions concern NGOs and parliamentary oversight.

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

We find it useful and important to meet with parliaments when we go to partner countries. It is true that, in some cases, the parliaments are not very well informed, so, in a way, our meeting with them serves as capacity building for them because it highlights for them that they ought to know what aid flows are coming into the country. That is one aspect. In addition, we want them to take an interest in engaging with their own government about where aid is coming in and where the government is spending that aid.

In other countries, however, the parliamentarians are very well informed and engage quite extensively with us about the performance of the aid programme and, indeed, we hear their views, just as we like to hear the views of this committee's members with regard to Irish aid. We believe this is a very important way of promoting mutual accountability because, so often, we see that our members are concerned about accountability to their own parliaments, as they should be, but they should also be concerned about accountability at the partner country level, and about what aid flows are coming in so the public and parliament can know where the money is going.

The Deputy referred to fighting corruption. An important element of that is being fully transparent to the public, civil society and parliament about what aid is coming in, so they can ask the Government where the money has gone. We believe meeting with parliament can serve multiple purposes-----

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Does Ms Jorgensen believe there are some countries which stand out in that regard?

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

It would be difficult to say. Personally, I have not gone to all of the partner countries we have visited so I could not draw a comparison. For each review we visit one or two partner countries so, again, our sample is not that big, although we probably visit six to eight countries in a year. As I said, the inclusion of parliament has been an important complement to reaching out to stakeholders in the development programme.

If the Chair will allow, I would like Ms Ida McDonnell to speak about engaging with civil society.

Ms Ida McDonnell:

I thank members for their very interesting questions regarding civil society. We have been working on this issue for the past three years in our team, drawing out some of the lessons we have seen coming from our reviews of how governments, as donors, and NGOs, whether they are based in the donor country or in developing countries, work most efficiently together to deliver development and to have a development impact.

It is interesting to know that some $19 billion a year of ODA is channelled to or through NGOs. These are predominantly the northern NGOs - the Concerns, Trócaires and Oxfams of this world - and a large share of this money is for humanitarian assistance. It makes sense in some ways that, as deliverers of humanitarian assistance, the NGOs are involved in that. They are well co-ordinated through the UN agencies responsible for delivering humanitarian assistance, and there are modalities around this that are quite effective.

Clearly, a large amount of money is involved and the members of the Development Assistance Committee have not come up with a recommended best practice for how donors should engage with civil society organisations. However, based on a lot of consultation with the organisational equivalents of Dóchas in the OECD member countries and the responsible people in the aid agencies, we carried out a survey and came up with some ideas. There are three key areas which we believe NGOs and the governments should recognise as important with regard to being more effective and efficient in delivering. First, there is an important role for consultation around policies and good practices so NGOs and governments actually talk to each other, dialogue and listen. Second, NGOs have a comparative advantage in being close to the ground, and they can raise some of the needs that are important to be addressed through the policies. Third, the funds and modalities need to be looked at carefully.

We have different ranges of size in the NGO sector, which is probably why there are no recommendations on how best to work with NGOs, so one would match the way an NGO is funded to its capacity to deliver and to absorb resources. A condition on the funding to the northern NGOs would be that they work with the developing country NGOs, and there is a large capacity building dimension through that, so it is not really a channelling of aid to other northern bodies. We have seen that one can provide programme-based financing to NGOs which have very good reputations through due diligence and can demonstrate capacity to deliver because they have good priorities on hunger, basic needs and so on. Then, there is the ear-marked funding, where one tries to have synergies between the donor's aid programme and using the NGOs to help deliver that aid programme. We are now attaching more and more results to the frameworks for engaging with these NGOs and they must be able to report back on results. This comes with a warning that one also needs to be sensitive to the nature of their work, in that one cannot quantify everything and it is long-term work, in order that one does not skew their projects on the basis of setting up short-term indicators that will not necessarily have a development impact over the long term.

Those are some of our lessons. It is a very complex and diverse world of civil society and NGOs. A minimum of $20 billion of ODA annually is going through NGOs and the question of the accountability of NGOs arises. They are working on that together at EU level, they are part of Busan and there is the CSO development group.

That is their area of work, which they must develop themselves. It is not up to individual governments to tell them how to develop their accountability. Having said that, development NGOs are generally very advanced in their accountability mechanisms because their fund-raising efforts tend to bring them very close to the public. Over the years, they have demonstrated good practice in terms of their transparency in dispensing aid.

Michael Mullins (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the delegation. Is the review that is being undertaken primarily concerned with Ireland's long-term development assistance, or will account also be taken of our contribution to urgent humanitarian crises that arise from time to time? Will there be an examination of both aspects of the State's aid budget?

The delegates spoke about transparency and accountability. As part of their review, will they be setting up a barometer, so to speak, to help them ascertain the views of the public on how the Irish Aid budget is being spent and whether there is ongoing support for it? We have gone through something of a crisis in recent months as a consequence of difficulties in the charities sector. There is a concern that many NGOs, including Trócaire, Concern and so on, are seeing a significant fall-off in fund-raising revenue and general support from the public. As part of their review, will the delegates work with these organisations to restore public confidence that the moneys being contributed by Irish Aid are being used as they were intended, namely, to help in alleviating problems in recipient countries?

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I apologise for my late arrival. My first question concerns the extent to which adequate connectivity exists between the various aid agencies in the field. To what extent do they co-operate on a regular basis to alert each other to their objectives and activities? Can the delegates assure us that a sufficient degree of connectivity and co-operation exists on an ongoing basis in the course of everyday operations in all locations where donor aid is being distributed?

Second, in recent times there has been a great deal of emphasis on the administrative costs of charitable organisations and agencies. To what extent can we be assured that in the case of development NGOs, those costs adhere to or surpass international norms?

Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent)
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I apologise to the delegates for being late to the meeting. As a member of this committee and as chairman of the Irish section of the Association of European Parliamentarians with Africa, AWEPA, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of African countries. What impresses one very forcibly is the changing nature of the aid relationship. It is no longer simply a case of donor and receiver, with a number of African countries now moving into the middle-income groups internationally. Will the delegates' review take account of that changing relationship?

When it comes to comprehensive development, coherence is important. I have referred on several occasions to the dilemma that arises in terms of the food hunger versus biofuels debate. Another issue of concern is that we are increasingly seeing food being treated as a commodity for the market, something which people can make money out of as opposed to the idea of it being primarily about meeting people's needs. I am interested to hear the delegates' views on that.

I was delayed this morning because I was meeting with a delegation of parliamentarians from the Arab spring countries who were invited over to Ireland by AWEPA. One of the issues that has emerged very forcibly from our engagement is the importance of fair and balanced trade partnerships, which inevitably raises the question of tax justice. We all know about illicit capital flight and there has been some progress made with the extractive industries. This issue must be a priority. What is the point of our giving aid to countries when they are losing their financial resources because of tax evasion by multinational companies?

Human rights issues are a frequent subject of discussion in this committee. Where we have an economic trade agreement with a country, the very least we should require is an assurance that workers have decent working conditions and other basic rights. I am not saying we should go in and tell people what to do in their own country. We can, however, be a strong voice, in a non-threatening and non-aggressive way, on the issue of human rights internationally. The reality is that we are trading with countries which have appalling records in the area of human rights. We cannot simply close our eyes to that reality.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I invite Ms Jorgensen to respond to that group of questions.

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

I will ask my colleagues to help me with some of the questions. Senator Mullins asked whether our review will consider both long-term development and humanitarian assistance. The answer is very much "Yes". Component No. 7 in our reference guide deals specifically with humanitarian assistance. We have a strong focus in the review of Ireland on how the State responds to fragile and vulnerable situations. That is a major focus for Ireland. It is often the case that a long-term development relationship arises out of what was initially a humanitarian assistance intervention, as was the case in Sierra Leone and Liberia some years ago. In those cases the assistance programme evolved into a reconstruction effort and subsequently a partnership with a longer-term development perspective. Part of our work is to examine how our members deliver their humanitarian assistance. Typically, we look to see whether they are working in a co-ordinated way with, for instance, the United Nations, the Red Cross and other pooled funding arrangements which ensure effective delivery of humanitarian assistance. We also examine whether they are working with local and international NGOs that can be part of the first responders effort. Some 10% of all overseas development aid goes to humanitarian assistance, so it is very much part of our remit.

Regarding public support for aid, I would like to turn that question back on the committee, if I may. The degree of public support for its aid programme is part of our review of Ireland. We have heard that opinion polls show support levels as high as 80%. We have been asking questions throughout the week about what it is that secures such a high level of support even in times of economic difficulties. We have also heard that there is very strong political support for the programme. We would be grateful for members' perspective on why there is such a high level of public buy-in to the ODA programme and why politicians continue to give it such strong support. That would give us an important insight.

Deputy Durkan asked whether we can give an assurance that the moneys received by aid agencies are being well spent. Part of our job is to examine whether the Irish Aid programme is, in our view, being administered well and in compliance with agreed international principles on the most effective way of delivering aid. We look in the field to see how well Ireland is co-operating with other donors, which touches on one of the Deputy's other questions. We are very much concerned with ascertaining whether the member we are reviewing is working in a joined-up way with other donors, participating in collaborative activities and pooled funding, and whether they buy into the recipient Government's programmes, including sector-wide programmes on health or agriculture, which help to ensure the aid is delivered in a co-ordinated way. My colleagues from Portugal might comment on the new focus in the EU on joint programming in certain priority countries. This is another way of ensuring the aid effort is co-ordinated as best it can be.

Therefore, one gets the most from it.

Administrative costs is a tricky issue because we cannot really examine what goes into administrative costs. However, the countries report to the DAC on their administrative costs. It is very difficult to compare one country's administrative costs with another's because they work in different development contexts with different modalities. Some types of aid might be more labour intensive than other types of aid. Some projects that are quite large can, perhaps, be delivered with lower administrative costs than other, smaller projects that are in very difficult situations. However, we look at whether the programme is managed in a tight way, whether it has appropriate structures and whether it is staffed with the right technical expertise to be able to deliver the programme that has been designed.

Ms Maria Paula Marques Faria de Barro:

I thank the committee for inviting us. I am from Portuguese Development Cooperation and for us, as a body for bilateral co-operation, it is important to be here and, as a peer, to understand best practices and experience and to have the possibility of sharing knowledge on the way forward. I will outline our relationship with the parliament.

Portuguese Development Cooperation has a very good ongoing relationship with parliament on accountability to the house and in advocacy on the principal means and objectives of our co-operation policy and also on relations with the parliaments of our partner countries and multilateral organisations. It is very relevant to be here and to see how involved and interested the committee is in this context and in being accountable regarding Irish co-operation.

With regard to the collaboration of bilateral co-operation institutions in the field, we have systematic EU meetings which are led by the Presidency, so it changes every six months, where we share the projects, constraints and good practice in the field and identify co-ordination processes. In Mozambique, for example, we have a joint programming process in the field. It is led by the European Union and the final objective is to have a unique European Union programme co-ordinated in the field in respect of European co-operation to Mozambique. Every member state is very much involved in this process, so each one of us can have a specific intervention that is co-ordinated and harmonised.

I also wish to stress the work we are all, as members, doing in DAC regarding the quality and accountability of our processes and projects, as well as the process as European member states. We have specific expert meetings where we prepare all the European policies regarding development policy on health, education, gender and so forth. This working process and mutual accountability and experience learning is also very important for the co-ordination process.

Ms Ana Paula Lopes Fernandes:

I will try to respond to the question on coherence, which is a very important and fundamental question. We have been addressing this in the Development Assistance Committee from the perspective of the policy coherence for development. We agreed on building blocks in terms of having the institutions really help us to have, first, an all-of-government approach to certain issues and then to address some of the areas where we are not being really supportive of development. We have been advancing this, but it is an area where we are having some difficulties.

At the same time, in the OECD we have what we call the development strategy of the OECD. There we have areas where we thought it would be good to have a more all-of-government approach to certain development issues. One of the areas in which Ireland is very much engaged is tax and development annual flows. Other areas relate to environment, gender issues and corruption issues. What we are trying to perceive in that regard is how can different parts of the government think in a development way and where are the constraints to having a global development that can service all. What are we doing by our policies that do not enable the others to develop also? That is the approach we are trying to take.

We also have a chapter in our review that addresses that coherence approach. In Portugal, for example, in some years we had an approach to security and development issues, and that takes time. First, one must put everyone working together. Then there must be a very strong discussion about the different views. The most important issue, however, is that in the end one manages to have some impact in the way one is operating as a global actor, and that impact should enable others to perform better. That relates pretty much to trade tariffs and some agriculture issues which were mentioned. The OECD has just released the food security PCD document which might also be of interest. We see that Irish Aid is very attentive to this and the work it is doing with agriculture. We had some meetings with different line Ministers to discuss this all-over approach.

I am sorry for taking so long but I wish to add a point on trade jobs and fair trade. We are conscious of that. Increasingly, different donors are acknowledging the need to go a little beyond the traditional areas of work and increasing the collaboration with other actors, such as the private sector, to see how we can best help different countries to create jobs and have economic growth. That is all part of the challenges we will face. This all links with the post-2015 framework. In that sense administrative costs are part of some of the discussions we are having in terms of counting aid for the future statistics of development finance. The Development Assistance Committee is very much linked with the United Nations in this discussion about post-2015 and the finance for development discussion, which also includes these administrative costs and the way we are measuring them.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I am glad you mentioned agriculture. As you know, ours is a good agricultural country and we export a great deal of food. Certainly, the Irish Aid programme and the NGO programmes work with agriculture. Africa is a very rich continent and it has good land. We have seen the projects on our visits. We have seen the developing nurseries and the training of farmers. The skilled people we send abroad, including the agricultural specialists, are doing trojan work in those countries.

To answer the question about Ireland and why we are so generous, it is in our nature to be generous. It probably dates back to missionary times when our priests and nuns went abroad to do some great work. Indeed, on some of our travels we have visited nuns and priests who have been missionaries for 50 years in Africa and have been doing tremendous work in assisting and educating people as well as in the medical profession. Obviously, those missionaries are scarce now and Irish Aid and Irish NGOs are carrying on their good work. There is also the response to the graphic television pictures we have seen when there is a tragedy, such as what happened due to the hunger in Somalia and recent events in the Philippines and in other areas. The Irish seem to respond to these. We are generous by nature and these graphic pictures obviously touch the hearts of many Irish people. That is the reason.

Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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I have a brief supplementary question. Busan was mentioned. I have been to Seoul with the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, and the OECD. We are examining and preparing for the United Nations post-2015 framework. I was shocked to hear from so many parliamentarians and delegates that some of these countries do not even know some of the agencies that are operating in their countries.

While I appreciate that Ireland is a member of the OECD and that its overseas aid operations are peer reviewed, are our guests conscious of certain charities, non-governmental agencies or church groups which appear - possibly uninvited - and commence operations in developing countries? When carrying out peer reviews, do our guests encounter difficulties with regard to the activities of these types of agencies which are not really answerable to, guided by or known to the authorities in the countries in question? Some individuals from Africa came before the committee and explained that representatives from certain fundamentalist churches were involved in campaigning against gay and lesbian rights in their countries.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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There would not be a role for the OECD in that regard.

Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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I was just wondering if our guests have come across evidence of this type of behaviour.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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Obviously, this is not an area in respect of which they have a role but do our guests wish to comment?

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

When we visit field stations in partner countries, we try to talk to as many as possible of the stakeholders involved in the development process. We meet representatives from local civil society and they very often inform us about the activities taking place. They work with international NGOs, church organisations and others and we do get a view from there. What is more important is that there is strong pressure globally for transparency, and this includes the NGOs. Coming out of the Busan conference, everyone agreed that we must be really transparent about what we do, and that includes NGOs. There is pressure to be transparent and it is in the interests of local civil societies and governments to know that. However, we do not want governments to be controlling NGOs because they need a certain space in which to operate. They should know what is going on and let the organisations get on with that work.

Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael)
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What happened in Busan was very important and the progress made there can be continued at the next meeting in Mexico.

I thank our guests for coming before the committee. We had an informative and useful discussion on the important work they do, which is all about transparency, openness and accountability. It is vital that the Development Assistance Committee should continue with its work. We look forward to the results that are expected in October and we wish our guests well in Malawi, where Ireland has a very good programme in place. I am sure they will return with good results from Malawi and I hope they will discuss matters with parliamentarians there. Parliamentarians are extremely important in the context of the role they play. We wish our guests well and hopefully some of us will meet them again later this evening.

Ms Karen Jorgensen:

I thank the Chairman.