Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

It has increased threefold since 1997. Ireland has led the way in development assistance, in many ways, over recent years. There has been a decline in the level of EU funding to sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest part of the world, in the past 20 years. The exact opposite has been the case in respect of the Irish programme, which is something we can take pride in on a cross-party basis. Ministers of State from the Labour Party, the Progressive Democrats and other parties have developed the Irish aid programme, which is the best development programme in the world, according to the OECD peer review group. That finding has been supported by independent non-governmental organisations over the past two weeks.

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