The director of Goal, Mr John O'Shea, has blamed the Department of Foreign Affairs decision to suspend funding to the agency on annoyance with his opposition to government aid policy. In his first public statement on the controversy over Goal's funding, Mr O'Shea said his criticisms of government policy "clearly got up the nose" of the committee advising the Department on aid policy.
It was a "funny coincidence" that Goal's funding had been suspended at the same time as he was attacking the Government's support for the Rwandan government. He appealed to the Minister of State for development, Ms Liz O'Donnell, to break the deadlock between the two sides.
Goal's chairman, Mr Noel Carroll, accused the Department of not telling the truth and "conducting a smear campaign" against the agency. He was speaking yesterday in Dublin at a press conference called to answer charges made by a Department spokesman in a letter in Saturday's Irish Times.
"There has never been a suggestion of fraud or misuse of funds at Goal and I'm calling on the Department to state this publicly," said Mr Carroll. "There is a campaign to damage Goal by innuendo, but not one shred of evidence against us."
According to Mr O'Shea, he repeatedly accused the Department of not spending its money well. "I asked why we were giving £2 million to Paul Kagame [the strong man of Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated government], a genocidal killer who says he is entitled to use western aid to wage war against the Hutus. Can you imagine Hitler getting money to kill his own people?"
At meetings of the Irish Aid Advisory Committee, Mr O'Shea also pressed for more funding for missionaries and non-governmental organisations such as Goal.
"These two groups do a far better job than the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and certainly the home governments where corruption is the name of the game," he said. "I didn't understand why the missionaries and the NGOs had to beg for money when it was being thrown at the UN agencies, many of which are hit by scandal."
In its letter to The Irish Times, the Department said Goal had failed to identify grants individually within its audited accounts; had sought funding from the Agency for Personal Services Overseas for assignments which had been fully funded by the EU Humanitarian Office (ECHO); and had refused access to independent auditors seeking to investigate the apparent evidence of double funding. Yesterday Mr Carroll responded by saying the Department had only asked for the information on individual grants last February. Its objections were "unbelievably pedantic and quite scurrilous".
Goal's financial controller had assured the Department that its next set of accounts would include this information for 1995 and 1996. These accounts, which are due out later this week, were delayed by the audit subsequently carried out by EU investigators.
Mr Carroll repeated his denial of double-funding. "The assignments in question were not fully funded by ECHO and this is why Goal sought funding from APSO." The accusation was "bogus, mischievous and designed to embarrass us".
He also denied that Goal had refused auditors access to its records. An audit team from Ernst and Young had visited the agency's offices on July 14th, but were withdrawn by the Department two days later.
A representative of Arthur Andersen, Goal's auditors, told the press conference that the agency's most recent sets of accounts had been issued without qualification on each occasion.
Mr Carroll said it was a "horrendous" thing for the Department to "inform" on an Irish agency to Brussels. Goal insists EU fraud investigators were called in on foot of a complaint by a Department official, but this is contested by the Department, which says the EU was conducting its own inquiry before there was any Irish involvement.
Asked whether he thought Goal's fund-raising efforts would be damaged by the current publicity, Mr O'Shea said he hoped the trust established through 20 years of relief work in the Third World could be maintained.
Mr O'Shea, a former sports journalist who founded Goal 20 years ago, returned from holiday at the weekend.
The delay caused by the Department was costing people's lives, he said. Some of the projects Goal was seeking to fund were for famine victims. "These people won't live long enough for an audit."
Mr Carroll said that on the day after the news of the suspension of Goal's funds appeared in The Irish Times, a woman had given a Goal collector in Grafton Street a cheque for £6,500. "Ask John O'Shea to say a prayer for me," she told the collector.
