Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade

The Work of Dóchas: Discussion

2:00 am

Mr. Jim Clarken:

I do not have an awful lot to add. I did touch on other forms of financing, including taxation. In the most recent G20, which Ireland has been invited to attend this year, the outcome statement very much focused on inequality in taxation. It involves how we can look to fully embrace and engage with global taxation systems that will help to fill some of those gaps, recognising that despite BEPS, a lot of money flows from the global south through countries like Ireland and onwards where it is not taxed fairly and, ultimately, the countries that pay these vast amounts of debt are not given the resources that are rightfully theirs to pay for health, education and all the protection services they need. The USAID architecture, as the Deputy rightly said, affects a wider system than just the USAID-funded projects. It involves a lot of UN agencies and collaboration with countries like Ireland and others, so that has a multiplier effect in a lot of ways.