Peter Power (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

I accept the Deputy's point that it is difficult for NGOs to plan ahead. It is extremely difficult to plan our budget for 2010 now because we simply do not know the Exchequer returns for October and November. In view of the unpredictable nature of the financial and economic crisis the world faces, we are finding it difficult to make plans across every Department and in respect of the economy as a whole. In January we made a significant, up-front payment of 70% of the entire funding for the MAPS partners - our largest partners - for the year to try to confer on them a degree of certainty in an extremely unpredictable environment.

The targets relating to ODA are expected to be reached over a period of many years. It would be well nigh impossible to reach those targets in a uniform and linear fashion, even in an ideal and predictable economic cycle. We are not in such a cycle at present. Rather, we are in the middle of an unpredictable period. The Government must take a long-term view and state that these targets are expressed over a period of many years. The question we must answer is how we can achieve those targets in a way which will ensure that our programmes remain sustainable. In addition, we must also balance our efforts against the reputational damage that might be incurred by the country. Such damage would be far worse if we allowed the country slide into the type of situation which obtained in the 1980s when we did not confront our difficulties in a timely manner.

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