John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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Question 100: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs the practical difference the Accra agenda for action will have on Irish aid policies and day to day operations in Ireland's development aid programme countries. [38570/08]

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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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.

John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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This is an issue that arises again and again. It arose again today when Concern attended the sub-committee on overseas development. With regard to Accra, today's discussion was concerned with the harmonisation of donor activity and cutting down the duplication of bureaucracy. Concern used the examples of Vietnam and Tanzania, where, for example, officials in the health care system spend more time on administration and dealing with donors than on the health care system. The GNP of development countries is being reduced, just as ours is. Therefore, we must have far more efficiency within the Irish aid budget as well as in budgets generally throughout the world. What ongoing efforts does Irish Aid make to ensure there is more efficiency and no unnecessary duplication within our aid budget?

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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We are in tune with and support the Accra agenda. The Deputy's point is well made. For some time there was a lack of co-ordination between donor countries and we put too much stress on recipient countries in terms of their governmental capacity to absorb and spend aid. Now, different countries and donors take a lead in respect of countries in certain areas, for example, in Uganda in terms of education. Ireland has supported the Government of Uganda strongly on the education agenda, to such an extent that Uganda now provides education for an extra 5 million children who started school over the past decade as a result of the introduction of free primary education.

In Uganda, Ireland has contributed to building better schools, training teachers, revising the curriculum, providing books, training school managers and so on. Our work there is a good illustration of how we dovetail with a national governmental agenda in terms of genuine sustainable reform and improvement of the existing governmental system vis-À-vis education. This is the approach we are consistently endeavouring to pursue with governments.

John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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That is probably a good illustration. I was in north-western Uganda with the sub-committee a few months ago, as was Deputy Michael Higgins. We would probably agree the money is being well spent and distributed properly. Recently, some members of the sub-committee went to Malawi, which is a very poor country. As Malawi is a programme country, it is proper that we fund and give money to it, but how can the Minister be sure of where to focus aid? Vietnam, for example, is a donor-laden country. Should we not focus on the poorest of the poor countries, like Cambodia, as opposed to a country like Vietnam that is not in the same bracket as Malawi and Cambodia?

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The preponderance of our aid goes to the poorest of the poor.

Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)
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Cambodia is much worse off than Vietnam.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The bulk of our aid goes to the poorest, but not all of it. It is a broad spectrum and there are different levels of support, but the preponderance goes to the poorest of the poor, particularly in Africa. We review the situation regularly and search for better value for money, better outcomes and optimal effectiveness in our aid programme. I take on board the points made by the Deputy and will relate them to Irish Aid and the Minister of State.