Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

My colleague, the Minister of State with responsibility for overseas development, Deputy Peter Power, led the Irish delegation to the Accra high level forum on aid effectiveness in Accra, Ghana in September and was able to make a meaningful contribution to the discussions on the Accra agenda for action. The high level forum has been effective in drawing renewed attention to the importance of improving aid delivery and giving value for money, especially at a time of a world economic downturn. As Ireland has been a strong advocate of the principles of aid effectiveness, agreed by both donors and developing countries in the Paris declaration of 2005, the Accra agenda for action will not make a significant difference to the way we currently work.

The context for Accra was a stocktaking of progress on the targets and benchmarks for better delivery of aid agreed in the Paris declaration. These include improved harmonisation of donor interventions; alignment with partner countries' policies; better division of labour among donors; improved transparency and predictability of funding; untying of aid; and mutual accountability for results.

The Accra agenda for action highlights three areas where further progress needs to be made by both partner countries and donors. These are strengthening country ownership over development, building more effective and inclusive partnerships and delivering and accounting for better results on the ground. Ireland is recognised as having made significant progress in all these areas. Our commitment to delivering our aid in ways that build capacity in partner countries, that support their national development policies, strategies and plans and that strengthen their national systems for delivery and accountability is explicit in the White Paper on Irish aid. Our aid is 100% untied and our country programme documents provide indicative funding amounts to our partners for up to five years.

The recent monitoring survey on the Paris declaration undertaken by the development assistance committee of the OECD in preparation for Accra indicated that we are performing above the EU average on most of the indicators agreed in the declaration. We will continue to strengthen our performance over the coming years.

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