Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 373: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been drawn to a statement made by Concord, a confederation of European non-governmental organisations, on the 3 April claiming that some European countries are artificially inflating their aid figures by including items that do not represent new money for poor countries, including money spent on debt cancellation, housing refugees and educating foreign students in European universities; and if he will confirm that the statement by Concord is not true of this State. [15278/06]

Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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Ireland's aid programme is internationally recognised as being of the highest quality. It is centred on some of the least developed countries in the world and on reducing poverty among the poorest of the poor. Successive evaluations by the OECD have endorsed its design and implementation. Last year a survey by ActionAid concluded that aid from Ireland really reached and directly benefited its target groups.

The Development Assistance Committee, DAC, of the OECD, of which Ireland is a member, has established rules and guidelines for the calculation of Official Development Assistance, ODA. These rules include as ODA certain expenditures on debt relief and debt cancellation, objectives which Ireland has strongly supported. Ireland is not a creditor of the developing countries and has not had bilateral debts to cancel. Ireland has however contributed to debt relief in multilateral institutions through the HIPC initiative and will contribute €59 million this year to the multilateral debt relief initiative at the World Bank. This contribution has been decided by the Minister for Finance and is a very welcome addition to the previously agreed budget for development co-operation.

The rules also permit the inclusion of certain costs associated with refugees, either in a donor country or in a recipient country. Preliminary figures for 2005 show payments by Ireland of about €2 million, or 0.4% of our total ODA, relating mainly to the cost of the resettlement programme operated in co-operation with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. These costs are borne by the Departments of Social and Family Affairs, Health and Children, Education and Science, Justice, Equality and Law Reform and Foreign Affairs. Clearly and demonstrably, the Concord statement does not apply to this State or to the Irish aid programme.