Ireland `failing' to reach aid targets

Ireland is failing by a considerable margin to reach its targets for increasing overseas aid, according to a new review of development co-operation worldwide.

The Reality of Aid report, compiled by European aid agencies, finds Ireland is among a minority of Western countries which have rising budgets.

However, the rate of increase is lower than envisaged in the Government's Programme for Government. It is also lower than the target set by the Rainbow administration, and lower than the target for this year in the Department of Foreign Affairs' strategy plan for Irish aid.

The report was published yesterday at a time of growing nervousness among aid agencies that development aid could be one of the main losers in the forthcoming Budget. Because of economic growth, large increases in real terms are needed to improve the percentage figure for Irish aid, which the Government says should reach 0.45 per cent by the end of its term in 2002.

Even this figure is a long way short of the UN aid target of 0.7 per cent of GNP, but the report notes that while governments throughout the world continue to reaffirm their commitment to this target, they allocate ever fewer resources to meet it.

The authors of the report's Irish chapter, Mr Hugh Byrne and Ms Maire Matthews of Concern, call for cross-party support for a new plan to increase aid, with agreed annual targets. "Ireland's high GNP per capita means that it can no longer claim an inability to match its generous words with generous deeds," they write. We must not "settle for being average".

The report admits there are concerns about the capacity of the aid programme to spend the large increases in funding that would flow from higher aid allocations. It suggests that some of the increases could be channelled into greater support for the UN system.

Last year, Irish aid amounted to £34 for each person in the State. More than 80 per cent of it goes to the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the report, aid from the 21 OECD donors has fallen to its lowest level.

The report, which provides a country-by-country analysis of aid trends in each of the OECD countries, was launched in Dublin yesterday by Concern, Trocaire, Oxfam Ireland and Action Aid.