The Government's promise to boost spending on overseas aid over the coming years gets its first test today with the announcement of the estimates for the coming year.
Nothing less than a significant rise in the aid budget is needed if the Government is to start living up to its commitment to increase spending to the levels recommended by the United Nations by the target date in 2012. Further stepped increases will be needed over succeeding years if the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product is to be attained.
The injection of €1 billion a year into aid spending, to be used for the benefit of the poorest people on earth, is welcome. However, as this week's Irish Times series on "The business of aid" showed, it brings with it a new set of challenges for those involved in planning and implementing our aid programme.
Up to now, Irish aid - both the State programme delivered by Development Co-operation Ireland (DCI) and the assistance provided by individual aid agencies - has enjoyed a generally good reputation, but this cannot be taken for granted. With so many pressures on the public purse, it behoves DCI to ensure Irish aid money is spent efficiently. It must be seen to alleviate the poverty it seeks to tackle and it must be proofed against corruption and other misuse.
DCI's aid programme has won international kudos for its concentration on the poorest African countries and for its independence from trade and political objectives. Yet as the programme grows, it will inevitably change and diversify. There probably is some future scope for expanding activities outside Africa, though this should not dilute existing programmes on that continent.
Plans to shift DCI to Limerick as part of the Government's decentralisation programme have run into serious opposition from some staff who have argued that the organisation should not be moved from Dublin. The plan risks destroying the esprit de corps that has delivered a high-quality aid programme, they argue. It certainly seems that specialist staff may be harder to recruit and retain, and the decision seems ill-timed given the expansion currently underway in DCI.
Questions also arise about the overall coherence of Government policy. If, as one study has asserted, trade flows have seven times the effect of aid on developing countries, could more be achieved by ensuring that our trade and agriculture policies - and not just our aid policies - are more favourable to the interests of the developing world?
With so much money expected to flow into the sector over coming years, it seems extraordinary that the Government has failed to act on the recommendations of numerous reports by increasing regulation in the sector. At present, anyone can set up an agency and act in a virtually unregulated manner. For years, the established aid agencies, aware that any scandal could affect the reputation of the entire sector, have been calling for reform, but even their calls have fallen on deaf ears.