This high quality aid, which is at the heart of the Irish programme and to which the OECD peer review is testament, took years of patient work to build. A real working partnership with a developing country begins with building an understanding of its people's reality and getting beneath the skin of the daily challenges. A social worker in Dublin or an aid worker in Africa will tell one of the slow, patient work needed to move beyond the barriers of low self-esteem which are common in any environment of poverty. It is also slow work to break down the assumption that outside know-how is better and to reach a common understanding of needs and the tentative beginning of genuine partnership.