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.