Dáil debates

Thursday, 9 July 2020

Estimates for Public Services 2020 (Resumed)

 

2:40 pm

Photo of Simon CoveneySimon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I will need some time to answer his question. Deputy Brady asked the same question earlier and I did not get a chance to get back to him. Deputy Harkin and others also mentioned the commitment to 0.7% of GNI and how we can get there.

As the Deputy knows, the programme for Government includes a commitment to getting to 0.7% by 2030. We have also committed to ensuring that we do not allow the actual spend to fall below 2019 levels of expenditure at any point between now and 2030. We will use a three-year averaging system to make sure that does not happen on a sustained basis. In other words, if something was to happen to the Irish economy as a result of Covid-19, Brexit, both of these concerns together or something else that we have not anticipated, we will still be very strongly committed to maintaining actual levels of expenditure as well as attempting to reach 0.7% of GNI. If our economy shrinks we will look like we are making significant progress in percentage terms by just maintaining actual spend. We want to maintain the actual amount we spend, which is now €838 million in total, and also go well beyond that.

If the Irish economy can grow at the rate at which we anticipated before the Covid crisis, we would be talking about spending some €2.5 billion a year on overseas development aid by 2030, which is a significant increase from where we are today. The seriousness of intent in regard to that target was evidenced two budgets ago when we increased the ODA spend by €114 million in one year. The reason we could not increase it by a similar amount last year was that we had a Brexit budget which was incredibly risk averse. The budget was planning for a no-deal Brexit and, therefore, it limited spending across all expenditure areas, including this one. Even in that environment, we still increased the ODA budget by more than €20 million. I believe we will do more if we can get back to some kind of normality. There is a commitment on the part of this new Government, as there was on the part of the last Government, to increase significantly, year on year, our expenditure on ODA. In my view, that expenditure is an investment in decency and morality and in our relationships with people in other parts of the word who desperately need our support and partnership, as opposed to our charity. That is what the new ODA strategy is all about.

We will work with parties in government and in opposition, perhaps though the committee process, to see how we can map out a realistic plan that will take us, over the next decade, from spending approximately €840 million to some €2.5 billion per year. We will work to see how we can move incrementally towards that ambitious target. We are committed to it and I look forward, over the next few years, to delivering on it.

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