Most Irish people support giving overseas aid to developing countries but know little about what is done with their money, according to a new survey.
A majority is opposed to further increases in Government aid but hardly anyone has any idea how much we actually give to developing countries, the survey finds.
Public goodwill towards the developing world is undiminished since the last major survey of attitudes in 1989, despite the growing secularisation of society and claims of "donor fatigue".
Embarrassingly for the Government's aid programme, Ireland Aid, which commissioned the survey, more than 60 per cent of people say they have never heard of the organisation.
The Minister of State for Overseas Co-operation, Mr Tom Kitt, acknowledged yesterday that the public had a low level of understanding of the complexity of development issues and of the Government's aid programme.
Mr Kitt said a key priority would be to raise the public profile of development issues in Ireland and to generate greater understanding of what is being achieved with the €350 million annual aid budget.
The Minister said he planned greater co-operation with the private sector in Ireland on development issues, as well as major new initiatives in the areas of education, agriculture and communications technology. Ireland Aid is also launching a new website next month. Some 90 per cent of respondents to the survey said they were "very much for" or "on the whole for" helping developing countries.
Most people get their information on the developing world from the media, with 92 per cent citing television news as the source, 65 per cent newspapers, and 45 per cent other television programmes. Asked to name the most serious problems facing developing countries, respondents identified natural disasters, war and conflict, and corruption.
Some 22 per cent said the Government's commitment to aid was too high, and 47 per cent said it was "about right". Only 15 per cent said it was too low.
Half of those asked had "no idea" how much money the Government spent on aid, and nearly everyone else underestimated the amount.
The findings were a "wake-up call" on the effectiveness of public information, Ms Maeve Collins of Ireland Aid told a seminar on the survey. Public understanding of development was "incomplete and vague", she said, and it would be "an uphill struggle" to change this.
However, Mr Howard Dalzell of Concern said it would be wrong to read too much into the research. There were many inconsistencies in the answers, he pointed out, and many people had given "virtuous" or "approved" answers.
"For example, people think aid is good but they don't know how much there is of it." Ireland Aid needed to remember that marketing wasn't "everything".