Irish international aid agency Concern Worldwide has said that it will have to close its operations in some countries and introduce more staff redundancies as a result of budget cuts.
But it has said while international donations are reducing, the Irish public is digging deeper to contribute more.
Concern chief executive Dominic Crowley indicated that about 400 personnel across the world would lose their jobs. He said in its office in Dublin the organisation was coming to the end of a redundancy programme which would see it shed about 55 or 56 posts.
In Dublin the organisation employs 330 people and globally about 4,000.
Some of the job losses in Ireland will be compulsory.
The closure of aid programmes in a number of countries will mean that further jobs will be lost.
“We know that our budget is going to be less than it was, so we know that we’re going to be doing less than we were. So that’s going to mean closing country programmes. It’s going to mean more redundancies for staff, and it’s going to mean that the level of what we can deliver in terms of essential life-saving programmes and our longer-term development programmes are going to be reduced in many places, not just in the countries that we close.”
He told The Irish Times that Concern had lost about €20 million in funding from the US which accounted for about one third of its global budget.
Mr Crowley said Concern Worldwide had anticipated securing contracts worth just under €60 million from the US Government this year but cuts in Washington will see that reduced by about one third.
“The whole programme that we had with USAid for the Democratic Republic of Congo – a huge country in the centre of Africa – and for Afghanistan, that funding has been completely cut.”
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“Other funding, particularly for the longer-term programmes in places like Kenya has also been cut.”
He said the conflict in Congo meant that the organisation had planned to go back to delivering water by truck to displaced and at risk communities. However, the funding cuts now meant that this had been reduced significantly, although the UK had stepped in to fill some of the gap.
He also said UK budget cuts were already starting to happen. He described the scale of funding reductions being envisaged as “catastrophic”.
However Mr Crowley said while international donors were cutting back, the Irish public was “digging deeper” in its contributions.
He said there had been a marked upturn in contributions from the Irish public which last year provided about €27 million in funding. He suggested the level of public donations could increase by €1 million or €2 million.
“The public support is incredibly important to us, and the generosity of the Irish public is well known, and we are deeply grateful for it. We have seen sort of modest growth over the last couple of years, but the results for this year are much better than we anticipated.”
“And we do get the sense that people are reacting to the reality of what they’re seeing and hearing, and they are digging deeper into their pockets and being incredibly generous. So in the year to date, it’s a very positive outlook in terms of the additional level of income.”
He said the Irish Government was “almost singular” in the fact that it was retaining its commitment of allocating 0.7 per cent of gross national income to official development assistance and keeping its funding to NGOs, the UN and international organisations.
Mr Crowley said the issue of potential mergers or amalgamations of agencies in the sector had been discussed internally – and that Concern would be open to such a development. However, the opportunities for such a development were limited.
“If you look outside at the nature of the organisations in Ireland, most are members of big international families. So world Vision, Christian Aid, Plan, International, all these ones. So there’s no real likelihood or expectation of an opportunity to merge with those.”
“So the other organisations that are here, are very few and far between. The number of organisations with whom there would be the potential for a merger is very, very small. We’re open to the possibility of it. We’ve looked at this before. We’ve talked to agencies before. We’ve gone through a process. It hasn’t worked out. If it becomes an option again, we’ll certainly look at it again.
Concern Worldwide will this week release its annual report for 2024. The report says last year it supported 27.3 million people in 27 of the world’s fragile and conflict-affected countries.
The report says the organisation is working on a new five-year plan but difficult decisions will have to be made.
“These are challenging times, but the Concern has been through challenging times before, and the importance of what we’re doing in delivering support to poor and vulnerable people living in circumstances of poverty and vulnerability, we need to continue we need to continue working. We need to maintain the hope that what we deliver will be sustained and we’ll be able to continue delivering it. ”
