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.