Is Irish taxpayers' money, channelled through the overseas aid programme, helping to finance wars and prop up foreign tyrants? Mr John O'Shea, director of the aid agency Goal, thinks so.
A long-standing critic of the Government's aid programme, he claims that "our money is being wasted in the Third World by people who make Hitler look like an altar boy".
Mr O'Shea's broadsides against Department of Foreign Affairs officials who run Ireland Aid are nothing new. The former journalist is capable of generalisations that set liberals squirming - such as his contention that "corruption and the Third World are synonymous" - but few can match the passion or force of his arguments.
Mr O'Shea's attacks would remain a minor irritant but for the fact that aid spending is set to quadruple to more than £800 million in 2007. That's the equivalent of one "Bertie Bowl" every year.
As Ireland Aid becomes one of the highest-spending areas of Government, the envy levels are rising elsewhere in the political system so now is not a good time for the programme to be coming under fire.
But to make matters worse, Mr O'Shea has scored a direct hit with his latest attack on Irish support for Uganda. The east African nation is one of Ireland Aid's six priority countries and its President, Mr Yoweri Museveni, was feted as one of Africa's leading statesmen on a visit to Ireland last October.
For many, President Museveni is a visionary who has created one of Africa's fastest growing economies. But as far as Mr O'Shea is concerned, he is "a beggar who's eating caviar and touring the world at our expense" while his army plunders neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.
When Mr O'Shea repeated these claims on a recent radio programme, and threw in a claim that African civil servants use aid money to support vast, extended families, an angry Ms Liz O'Donnell demanded a right of reply from RTE.
She got it a week later - and found herself on the receiving end of a roasting from presenter Pat Kenny. He was taking his cue from a recent UN report which found that Mr Museveni and his counterpart in Rwanda were "on the verge of becoming godfathers" of an illegal network plundering gold, diamonds and rare ore from Congo. Uganda and Rwanda had given criminal cartels a "unique opportunity" to make huge sums of money from Congo's mineral wealth, and their leading families were making huge fortunes as a result.
Ms O'Donnell responded that Mr O'Shea was making the mistake of confusing "bad governance" with "weak governance". It was "simplistic" to suggest that Ireland should abandon the poor of Uganda, she suggested.
Yet Uganda is by no means the only rogue recipient of Irish generosity. What about Ethiopia, which engaged in a futile war with its neighbour Eritrea last year while its people starved in their thousands? Visiting Ethiopia last year, Ms O'Don nell came to the extraordinary conclusion that Ethiopia (population 64 million) had been "aggressed" by Eritrea (population four million)..
Ireland spent £19 million in aid in Uganda last year, and £20 million in Ethiopia.
The argument highlights the political minefield in which aid operates. To be effective, aid donors should be in for the long haul, but what should they do when standards of governance go downhill?
Even Mr O'Shea admits he wouldn't pull his staff out in such circumstances, but he argues that this is because aid agencies work directly with the "grass-roots poor", whereas state donors have to deal with governments that are often corrupt.
There was further bad news for Ireland Aid when staff found that local officials in Tanzania had embezzled £50,000. On radio, Ms O'Donnell admitted that her officials were "getting it in the neck" at home as a result of the Ugandan report. Privately, Department staff say Mr O'Shea's constant sniping is sapping morale at a time when Ireland Aid should be gearing up for an unprecedented expansion.
Ms O'Donnell has appointed a committee to review Ireland Aid and make suggestions for its future expansion. The committee is dominated by civil servants and has no representative of the aid agencies or the missionaries. The review has attracted more than 200 submissions, but when The Irish Times sought access to them under the Freedom of Information Act, permission was refused.
Ironically, given Mr O'Shea's criticisms, the most likely area of future growth for Ireland Aid will be at headquarters in Dublin, as numerous official reports have highlighted gaps in the organisation's administrative capacity. An increase in the number of priority countries is also likely, following much dithering over the inclusion of Vietnam.
Whatever happens, the internecine war in the aid community will have to stop. It's taken almost 30 years to get a Government to meet UN targets on aid. What a shame if this commitment were to fall apart even before it was implemented.