Madam, - Some years ago I was severely criticised for speaking out against the policy of giving aid to the government of Rwanda.
In the aftermath of the genocide, nobody wanted to hear my fears that the person who was receiving aid money from Ireland and the international community at large, President Paul Kagame, also had blood on his hands.
Now it seems my fears were well founded. A French judge who has carried out a six-year investigation of the shooting down of a plane carrying the former Rwandan president - the event that sparked the genocide - has accused Kagame of involvement. He also accuses him of complicity in the massacre of 450,000 Hutus both in Rwanda and in the Congo.
Although the Irish Government has since stopped giving financial aid to Rwanda, it persists in giving aid to other countries with similarly dubious records, both on human rights and corruption. Uganda receives millions each year from Ireland even though it has been engaged in the rape of the Congo and is among the most corrupt governments in the developing world.
I repeat my call for the Irish Government to abandon its policy of bilateral aid to corrupt regimes that have little interest in human rights.
Let's help the poor and the vulnerable; but taxpayers' money should not be given to people in foreign governments who have a record of corruption and who have blood on their hands. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN O'SHEA, GOAL, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin