Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)

We raise human rights issues constantly with our partner countries, either through Irish Aid officials or through Ministers and Ministers of State who visit, including myself. We will continue to do that. If we were to withdraw all our funding from a particular country due to human rights issues, then we would be depriving the poorest of the poor people in those countries. We need to make sure we know exactly where our money is going and if necessary, shift it into particular areas to ensure we have full oversight. We are constantly watching how we spend it. A big part of this is to ensure that how the money is spent is absolutely transparent. As we have a lot of influence in these countries due to our development programmes, we genuinely can influence change for the better and we have done this in many human rights areas. However, I would not be in favour of suddenly pulling out of a country completely, because that has a devastating effect on the most vulnerable people.

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