The minutes of the meeting of 9 April have been circulated. Are there any matters arising from the minutes?
Business of Joint Committee.
During that meeting, if memory serves me correctly, I put forward a proposal that the committee invite the Dalai Lama to come to address the committee and I thought it got unanimous support from the committee. I do not see it reflected in the minutes. Am I correct?
The letter issued. His representative came here, as Deputy Timmins might remember.
The letter has issued. That is fair enough.
I support my colleague on the Dalai Lama issue. There was correspondence from the Irish Famine Memorial committee. Did we write back to it supporting that issue?
No. The correspondence was noted.
We normally note correspondence but I asked that we write to it in support.
We can follow that up.
Thank you, Chairman.
The matter has gone on since my own time. I agree entirely that we should support the Irish Famine Memorial committee rather than note its correspondence.
That was agreed at the time and it was noted, but the request to write as well was not carried through. Are the minutes agreed? Agreed.
On EU scrutiny, there are three times referred to the committee regarding decisions taken by the Joint Committee on European Scrutiny. These have been circulated and it is proposed that they be noted. Is that agreed? Agreed.
When discussing the committee's work programme for 2008 it was agreed we would continue our examination of the Irish Aid programme in our programme countries. We completed detailed reports on five of the nine programme countries, namely, Ethiopia, Uganda, Timor-Leste, Vietnam and Mozambique. During this Dáil session we hope to complete the remaining four, starting today with Malawi.
We received a large number of submissions from the various non-governmental organisations which have an interest in and are active in Malawi. It was not possible, therefore, to have all of them make oral presentations today. I am grateful to all the organisations for their comprehensive briefings and submissions. If Members are agreeable, I propose to have a second meeting on this subject in early June to hear the presentations from those groups which could not be accommodated today. There are a number of major groups involved. Is that agreed?
It is important we look at Somalia. Perhaps we could do so in conjunction with that meeting or as soon as possible.
That can happen separately at one of our meetings.
We might put it on our agenda.
It is just that we would have a meeting fairly early in June to consider the other submissions. We will include Somalia on the programme.
I am concerned that we do not have one of the major contributors. In fact, I received a telephone call from Mr. John O'Shea of GOAL who was quite upset that he was not brought in on this meeting. Considering that GOAL had the largest expenditure of all the NGOs in 2007, why did he not know? I mean no disrespect to the agencies present but why was he not in the first group?
He is among the second group. One cannot have everyone together.
I accept that. However, his organisation had the largest expenditure of all the NGOs in 2007.
That is not necessarily the only criterion.
I know that. I am just wondering why Mr. O'Shea was not brought in first.
Simply put, that is not the way it works. It is only possible to deal with a few groups at a time. We will, therefore, take some now and others later.
Has GOAL been invited to attend the second meeting?
Yes.
Will its representatives be attending?
They have been informed and a letter will be sent.
So they have not yet been invited.
They can be present today if they so wish.
So they have not been invited.
No, but they have been informed about the way in which it is being done.
However, they were not invited to this meeting.
They are being formally invited now.
So they were not invited previously.
They were invited to attend today.
Were they invited to address us today?
No. There will be two different groups appearing at separate meetings. The Red Cross and Oxfam will also be giving presentations. One group will appear before the committee at its next meeting on this matter and the other will address us today.
I am just wondering why Mr. O'Shea was not invited——
We could not invite everyone to make presentations today because the meeting would have been too long.
There are nine partner countries. If we are obliged to listen to the representatives of every NGO involved with these countries and if we must have not one but two meetings for each, it would be necessary to hold 18 meetings per year on this subject.
We have already had presentations in respect of five of the countries.
I am concerned that GOAL, which is——
We have already dealt with five of the programme countries and there are four more with which we must deal. Let us proceed with our work.
As we hear reports on particular countries, different themes will suggest themselves. We should leave ourselves free to consider common elements such as issues relating to transparency, governance, food security and relationships with international institutions. It is important that we do this. The issues to which I refer will arise at this meeting in respect of Malawi and the food strategy, options, etc., relating thereto. This will have implications in the context of the World Bank and so on. We must discuss the themes relating to each of the countries.
That is why it will take some time to complete our work. I propose that we proceed with the business set down for today's meeting.