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.